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Shareware Supreme Volume 6 #1
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FORM360.ZIP
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1988-10-11
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8KB
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226 lines
FORM360.EXE
This program was written to improve transportability between 360k
floppy drives and 1.2meg (AT) drives.
SOME BACKGROUND
With the IBM AT, IBM introduced the 1.2meg high density floppy
drive. The track spacing on this drive is different than that
used by the standard 360k floppy drives.
Even when formatting 360k floppies in 360k drives, the DOS format
program FORMAT.COM uses slightly different parameters when
formatting on an AT than it does when formatting on a PC or XT
machine.
While the AT drive is capable of reading 360k floppies, it is
often unreliable due to these differences.
WHAT FORM360 DOES
With FORM360, you can format 360k disks in either drive A: or B:.
It will, at your option, verify the disk after completing the
formatting. You may select the parameters that you wish the disk
to be formatted with, ie., XT or AT parameters. FORM360 may also
be used to verify without formatting or otherwise disturbing the
disk's data.
It may be run as a one time operation to format one disk or in
batch mode to format any number of disks in succession. It may be
run from batch files and its success or failure may be tested.
Example:
form360 b: /v /q
if errorlevel == 1 goto failed
.
.
.
:failed
WHAT FORM360 DOESN'T DO
~~~~~~~
FORM360 will not format/verify drives other that A: or B:, nor
will it format/verify formats other than the standard 360k floppy
(2 sided, 9 sector per track).
While FORM360 does write a proper boot record in sector 0, it does
not copy IBMBIO.COM or IBMDOS.COM. To make bootable disks, you
must copy these files to the new disk using SYS.COM. Note that
this only works for PCDOS, that is, the system files must be named
IBMBIO.COM AND IBMDOS.COM.
THE COMMAND LINE
Formatting:
FORM360 A: [/B] [/Q] [/V] [/A or /X]
Verify only:
FORM360 A: [/C] [/B] [/A or /X]
At the DOS command line, enter 'FORM360 ' followed by the drive to
be formatted or verified. This is the minimum command line,
FORM360 will not default to the current (or any other) drive.
Example:
FORM360 A:<Enter> will format the floppy in drive A, using
your machine's existing parameters or
specifications. No verify will be per-
formed and errors will be fully reported.
On completion, FORM360 will return control
to the DOS command line.
Optional command line switches that may be used to alter FORM360's
operation include:
/A format using specifications used on an AT machine, regardless of
what machine the format is actually being done on.
/C Check a disk. Perform verify only, without format. This
operation will not disturb the data on the disk being verified.
/B Batch operation. Upon completion of each disk, it will ask if
you wish to do another disk.
/Q Quiet mode. All prompting is disabled. Errors cause immediate
termination without error report. Use this switch when running
FORM360 from batch files.
/V Verify the disk's integrity after formatting.
/X format using specifications used on an XT or PC machine,
regardless of what machine the format is actually being done on.
Examples:
FORM360 B: /C /B Verify only. Verify multiple disks in
drive B using the spec's of the current
machine.
FORM360 A: /C /A Verify only. Verify one disk in drive A
using AT specifications.
FORM360 A: /Q /V Format and verify one disk in drive A.
Do not prompt or report errors, just quit
if an error occurs.
FORM360 A: /B /A Format with verify multiple disks in drive
A. Use AT specifications.
Note: Running FORM360 without any command line parameters will
cause FORM360 to display the list of command line options.
ERROR MESSAGES
Unless the /Q switch is used, FORM360 will prompt you as needed
and will fully report the following errors when they occur:
BAD COMMAND - Your machine failed to recognize one of FORM360's requests
to access the disk.
BAD ADDRESS MARK - This group of four are self explanatory and usually
RECORD NOT FOUND occur due to corrupted data or a misaligned recording
CRC ERROR head. These are the errors that cause problems when
BAD SEEK moving floppies between 360k and 1.2meg drives.
DMA ERRORS - DMA chip failed
NEC CHIP FAILED - The disk controller chip failed.
WRITE PROTECTED DISK - disk has write protect tab in place.
TIMED OUT - disk drive didn't respond
In addition, FORM360 will tell you when the error took place; either
during:
1. Format operation
2. Verify operation
3. Boot record, FAT, and directory initialization.
IN PRACTICE
I have found that verifying immediately after formatting rarely
fails. It is usually after writing data to the formatted disk
that problems begin to arise.
To transfer data between one machine with a 360k drive (machine
#1) an another machine with a 1.2 meg drive (machine #2), perform
the following steps: (Both machine's drive are assumed be drive A)
1. Format the floppy on machine #1 using the command line:
FORM360 A:
2. Take the newly formatted disk to machine #2 and verify it in
the 1.2meg drive using the command line:
FORM360 A: /C
3. If the disk verified OK in step 2, move on to step 4.
Otherwise, goto step 1. If after repeating steps 3 or 4
times, you still can't get a good verify, change to a
different disk a try again. All disks are not created equal -
steps 1 and 2 are performed to weed out the marginal ones.
4. Now you have what appears to be a good candidate for transfer.
Copy the data to be transferred on the the floppy.
5. Insert the floppy in machine #2 and use FORM360 with the
command line:
FORM360 A: /C
6. If the disk still verifies correctly, you may copy its data to
machine #2. If verify failed, change to a new floppy and
begin again with step 1.
Once you have succeeded in transferring data between machines and
the disk used consistently passes the verify process on machine
#2, mark the disk as a TRANSFER ONLY disk. Use this disk whenever
you need to transfer data between the two machines.
SOME POINTERS
DON'T USE CHEAP DISKS. Disk quality IS important, as transfer
problems are caused by very slight discrepancies.
If the prescribed steps, given above, don't solve your transfer
problems:
1. Try performing step one with the /A switch.
2. Do step 1 on the 1.2meg drive and step 2 on machine #1.
The idea here is that only small differences in head alignment and
data spacing can make for big problems. By changing the
conditions's a little and using high quality disks, you can often
find a combination that works well when other combinations fail
miserably.
Good luck.
Bob Tellefson
RCT Design
PS. This program may be freely shared with friends and associates.
No compensation is expected or requested.