DMF Floppy Disk Format

2003-11-19 17:10:30

Just discovered the that floppies can hold > 1.44meg...  which is handy for my work homework and the like.  Is there a freeware formatter?  I found a few that last 30 days or so before you have to register...  (which is long enough I guess, but anyway)

Thanks!

DMF Floppy Disk Format

Reply #1 – 2003-11-19 21:21:47

fdformat? not even sure if it'll still work these days. Worked under dos-based windows anyways. Hella old pascal program, IIRC. Haven't used it since CDR arrived I think.

<edit> wow, I still have this in my c:\tools\ dir, hahaha. I don't recall what all the command line switches in this command mean, but I had this in a batch file to format 1.72M disks.

Code: [Select]

fdformat a:/f172/y2/u/k

first google result was this, let me know if it's not still around.
http://www.winimage.com/othertl.htm

DMF Floppy Disk Format

Reply #2 – 2003-11-20 09:00:59

Actually, an ex-collegue of mine once wrote a diskette copy application with support for >1.44MB diskettes. IIRC, it also allows you to format diskettes to higher capacities.

It's free, and the source code is included. Get it here:
http://users.pandora.be/jbosman/applications.html (DCOPYNT 1.04)

Note that it only works on WinNT/2K/XP, not on Win9x/Me.

However, for Win9x/Me you could give DCOPY (DOS) a try (available on the same page).

DMF Floppy Disk Format

Reply #3 – 2003-11-20 09:11:02

remembered at least what the /y2 does, it is for sector offset of 2, meaning that each succeeding track's sectors are pushed back by two. I found this to be the optimal setting for my floppy drive I had at the time. That is, the amount of time it took for that drive's head to move to the next track was just over the amount of time it took for the drive to spin 1 sector, so making this offset 2 sectors meant that the drive was pretty much immediately ready to start reading/writing the next track, rather than having to wait for another full revolution to get started with the next track.

DMF Floppy Disk Format

Reply #4 – 2003-11-20 18:37:44

ciao..


grill me.. but if am not way out.. there is/was a util. once that could
format a diskett up to 1.68..
i think the options where 960. 1.44. 1.68
and if it still exist.. it would supprise me if it where aviable for 2k/xp

i did came across it coz. i needed to copy win95 to floppy.

DMF Floppy Disk Format

Reply #5 – 2003-11-20 19:21:46

Thanks again, all

DMF Floppy Disk Format

Reply #6 – 2003-11-20 20:12:35

I'd recommend a very old gem: Cirisoft's 2M 3.0. Download it from here: http://www.dosonly.net/fileu.htm

It's a DOS tool, I don't know if it's compatible with modern operating systems.