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1992-03-13
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┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ ┌────────────┐ │
│ │FMT Ver 1.00│ │
│ │ MANUAL │ ┌┘
│ └────────────┘ └┐
│ │
│ ▄████▄ │
│ ██████ │
│ ▀▀▀▀ ▀ │
│ ▐▌ │
│ ██ │
│ ██ │
│ ██ │
│ ▐▌ │
└───────▀────────────────▀───────┘
─── A high-capacity floppy formatter ───
██████████████
▐▌ Features ▐▌
██████████████
■ Maximum formats : 360K diskette = 820K ∙ 720K diskette = 1066K (NEW!)
1.2M diskette = 1476K ∙ 1.44M diskette = 1722K
■ Most extended formats can be made bootable
■ An extended boot sector will boot C: if you leave floppy in A:
■ Options to change logical disk organization:cluster size & root dir capacity
■ Allows to create new named formats to save typing
■ Fast and quite format : drive doesn't play music when marking bad clusters
■ A lot of low-level options for programmers
███████████████████████████████
▐▌ Requirements and limitations▐▌
███████████████████████████████
FMT needs at least an AT to run. Moreover, it was tested only with high-density
drives. It *should* work with DD drives, but you might need to play with
options. 2.88M drives are not supported.
The reason for the mess is that I had to figure out how diskette BIOS work by
experiment. Obviously, experiments were limited by my computer & those of my
several friends. I couldn't find a good book covering diskette operations...
I'll work on compatibility of the next versions of FMT. In the meanwhile, I'll
be very grateful if you let me know about the bugs/compatibility problems of
this program. I am sure that version 1.00 has a plenty! Also, this file is not
debugged for grammer errors.
████████████████████
▐▌ Distributing FMT ▐▌
████████████████████
You can distribute FMT freely as far as it's copied in original form or you
clearly document all changes you have made. No fee should be charged for the
program, but you can charge a small fee for distribution.
FMT is released as shareware: you can try it for free; if you decide to use
it, you are encouraged to register for $15 or whatever you think this program is
worth. This is my first shareware program. It will be interesting to see what
happens.
██████████████
▐▌ Finding me ▐▌
██████████████
This is an interesting question. Now I am studying in Boston University and live
on campus, so my current address is valid only to the end of semester (Approx.
middle of May 1992). I give it anyway:
e-mail : kibirev@CSA.BU.EDU
phone : (617)352-5563
mail : Oleg Kibirev, 277 Babcock street Box 1869, Boston MA 02215, USA
Please, don't send anything to this address unless you have checked that I am
still here by phone or e-mail.
Now my home address:
Oleg Kibirev ĽÑú è¿í¿αÑó
Ilycha 7 Flat 42 π½. ê½∞¿τá 7-42
Novosibirsk 630090 ú. ì«ó«ß¿í¿α߬,630090
Russia
██████████████
▐▌ ─ Thanks ─ ▐▌
██████████████
It would be impossible for me to write this program without studying 2 other
products.
The first is FDFORMAT, the floppy formatter written by Christoph H. Hochstätter.
I have used a lot of good ideas from this program in FMT. The important ones
are:
Idea to use interleave = 2 to fit more sectors on a track
Extended boot sector that boots C: instead of A:
Sector spinning to improve disk performance
Loading BIOS extender to HMA with DOS 5.00
Another one is 800.COM, a tiny TSR by Pasquale Alberto. This program extends
diskette BIOS, so that most extended formats can be handled by DOS standard
FORMAT, DISKCOPY & DISKCOMP. Studying it's code helped me to understand how
to implement high-capacity formats and write a TSR to make them readable by DOS.
██████████████
▐▌ INT13X.COM ▐▌
██████████████
You need to load this TSR to make full use of FMT. The simplest way is to run
it from AUTOEXEC.BAT, or, with DOS 4+, INSTALL it from CONFIG.SYS. Memory
requirements of INT13X shouldn't cause a problem. If you have DOS 5 running in
HMA, INT13X will load to the end of the DOS segment, keeping no memory. DOS
will even bother to toggle A20 line for me! Otherwise, it will keep 160 bytes.
The only option of INT13X is LOW, that will prevent it from loading to HMA. Use
if you have any problems without it. You can end up with a strange combination
LOADHIGH INT13X LOW
If you make a diskette with extended format bootable, make sure that it runs
INT13X during startup. Otherwise, the floppy may become unreadable after the
first disk change.
Note that other disk BIOS extenders will not support a 3½" DD diskette with
11-13 tracks.
█████████████
▐▌─── FMT ───▐▌
█████████████
Running the program with empty command line will display the summary of options.
The only mandatory parameter is drive letter - A: or B:.
You can stop FMT at any time by two ways. The first is pressing ESC. This is
an option for brave - the program will stop even in the middle of DOS or BIOS
call. FMT will perform cleanup needed to avoid trouble in this case. However,
there are some popup TSRs that refuse to popup if INT 13H never returns. You
can defeat the problem by running I13S.COM before & I13R.COM after TSR.
Alternatively you can just open drive door.
Here is the summary of FMT options. Logical options (like /V or /W) can be
disabled by adding '-'. With all options that takes a number, you can specify a
hex by omitting ':'. For example : /DF9 == /D:249.
It's Ok to specify the option several times - the last occurrence will determine
the result. This can be useful with "named formats" (see CONFIG.FMT section) or
batch files.
╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════╤════════════════════════════╗
║ /T:xx - Number of tracks │ /G:xx - Gap length ║
║ /N:xx - Sectors per track │ /I:xx - Interleave ║
║ /F:name - Use named format │ /M:xx - BIOS media byte ║
║ /V"label" - Set volume label │ /L:xx - Format fill char ║
║ /S<:boot> - Copy system to floppy │ /Z:xx - Retry count ║
║ /Q - Quick format (Fast DEL *.*) │ /W - Write verify ║
║ /E - Test (do everything but format) │ /R:xx - Root directory size║
║ /B - Batch mode (no output/prompts) │ /C:xx - Sectors per cluster║
║ /X:xx - Sector spinning between heads │ /D:xx - FAT ID byte ║
║ /Y:xx - Sector spinning between tracks │ /A - Verbose output ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════╧════════════════════════════╝
/T:xx /N:xx - specifies the number of sectors and tracks. The capacity of the
diskette in K is simply equal to tracks∙sectors. For example /T:82 /N:18 formats
a floppy to 1476K. The maximal number of sectors that will work depends on the
media:
5¼" DD disk : 1-10 sectors (9 = DOS standard)
5¼" HD disk : 11-18 sectors (15 is standard)
3½" DD disk : 1-10 sectors in DD drive (DOS puts 9)
1-13 sectors in HD drive
1-12 sectors on some HD drives (Sony ?)°
3½" HD disk : 14-21 sectors (18 = DOS standard)
°I have seen only one computer that couldn't format 13 sectors. Interestingly
enough, it had no problem reading & writing such diskettes. 12 sectors were
fine.
As you can see, DOS doesn't get the most from a diskette! For a 720K diskette,
it gets 320K less than possible even with the same number of tracks.
Of course, in normal life you are only interested in the highest number of
sectors or DOS compatible number (See the next option for some useful
combinations). You may want to set fewer sectors do that your program keeps all
the space of the distribution diskette (this makes virus infection harder).
Note that DOS can handle such floppies without INT13X.
Number of tracks supported doesn't depend on the diskette. 5¼" DD disk drive has
rated capac