How do I format a 1.44Mb floppy disk in a laser servo drive?

Mark Hobley · External Since: Aug 31, 2004 Posts: 198

How do I format a 1.44Mb floppy disk in a laser servo drive?

My laser servo drive is /dev/hdd. How can I format a 1.44Mb floppy disk in DOS
format?

The fdformat utility does not appear to work with a floppy disk:

fdformat /dev/hdd
Could not determine current format type: Invalid argument

Please advise.

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/

Michael Black · External Since: Jun 13, 2004 Posts: 349

Mark Hobley (markhobley@hotpop.deletethisbit.com) writes:
> How do I format a 1.44Mb floppy disk in a laser servo drive?
>
> My laser servo drive is /dev/hdd. How can I format a 1.44Mb floppy disk in DOS
> format?
>
> The fdformat utility does not appear to work with a floppy disk:
>
> fdformat /dev/hdd
> Could not determine current format type: Invalid argument
>
Did you look at the man page for fdformat?

Because there's a clue right down at the bottom of the page.

No, I wasn't aware of it, but it took me a second to look at the man
page, and see that bit, and the second man page it points to sure
seems to be what you need.

Michael

Lasse Jensen · External Since: Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 77

Mark Hobley wrote:

> How do I format a 1.44Mb floppy disk in a laser servo drive?
>
> My laser servo drive is /dev/hdd. How can I format a 1.44Mb floppy disk in
> DOS format?
>
> The fdformat utility does not appear to work with a floppy disk:
>
> fdformat /dev/hdd
> Could not determine current format type: Invalid argument
>
> Please advise.

dd a empty formatted floppy to a file and dd it back to the floppy you want
to format? Or use mkfs.msdos instead of fdformat?

--
Lasse Jensen [fafler at g mail dot com]
Linux, the choice of a GNU generation.

Mark Hobley · External Since: Aug 31, 2004 Posts: 198

Michael Black <et472 RemoveThis @freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
> Did you look at the man page for fdformat?
>
> Because there's a clue right down at the bottom of the page.

Hmmm, be more explicit. I still don't know what you are talking about. I guess
maybe you mean setfdparm. Remember this is not a real floppy drive, but an
LS120. Will that work on an LS120 drive? I have not installed that package,
but I will, if I need it. What if I then want to use an LS120 disk again,
after using the floppy disk. Will the drive be screwed, or does it reset,
when I eject the disk?

Also what is fd(4)?

man 4 fd
No manual entry for fd in section 4

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/

Bill Marcum · External Since: Dec 18, 2006 Posts: 286

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:08:17 GMT, Mark Hobley
<markhobley.DeleteThis@hotpop.deletethisbit.com> wrote:
>
> Also what is fd(4)?
>
> man 4 fd
> No manual entry for fd in section 4
>
> Mark.
>
The fd(4) man page is in the fdutils package.

--
You never go anywhere without your soul.

Dances With Crows · External Since: Sep 16, 2006 Posts: 307

Mark Hobley staggered into the Black Sun and said:
> Michael Black <et472 RemoveThis @freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
>> Did you look at the man page for fdformat?
> maybe you mean setfdparm. Remember this is not a real floppy drive,
> but an LS120. Will that work on an LS120 drive?

fdformat depends on various ioctl()s that are *only* there on a real
34-pin floppy, and not on IDE- or USB-connected devices. This means
there's really no way to lowlevel format a 3.5" disk on those devices
without black magic. Not that it really matters--that media type has
been superseded for all but some really special-purpose stuff. Good
riddance.

> What if I then want to use an LS120 disk again, after using the floppy
> disk. Will the drive be screwed, or does it reset, when I eject the
> disk?

The drive should autodetect whether there's a floppy or LS-120 disk in
it, much like DVD+-RWs autodetect whether they're dealing with a CD-RW,
a DVD+RW, or a DVD-R.

--
The squirrels now live in fear of the magic exploding compost heap.
--Dan Holdsworth
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see

Mark Hobley · External Since: Aug 31, 2004 Posts: 198

Dances With Crows <danSPANceswithTRAPcrows.RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:
> Not that it really matters--that media type has
> been superseded for all but some really special-purpose stuff. Good
> riddance.

The problem is that some of my students use college or public library
computers, which still use floppy disk drives.

I was hoping to be able to reformat floppy disks on my own computer, without
having to go to college.

Never mind. Maybe I can just delete the files or mkfs.msdos without formatting.

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/

Dances With Crows · External Since: Sep 16, 2006 Posts: 307

Mark Hobley staggered into the Black Sun and said:
> Dances With Crows wrote:
>> Not that it really matters--that media type has been superseded for
>> all but some really special-purpose stuff. Good riddance.
> The problem is that some of my students use college or public library
> computers, which still use floppy disk drives.

Obsolete equipment! How wonderful. In Fried Hardware 2 days ago, I saw
a tiny, fast, hard-to-damage 2G USB keychain drive for $40. That's a
great argument that it's time to forget floppies.

> I was hoping to be able to reformat floppy disks on my own computer,
> without having to go to college. Never mind. Maybe I can just delete
> the files or mkfs.msdos without formatting.

Floppies are the only medium left where you *can* do a lowlevel format.
If you have to do one, you just can't do it with a USB/IDE drive.
mkdosfs will still work.

--
ROBERT: So how do we get the pig to stop running around?
TRIANGLE: I think we'll have to rely on the staple gun once again.
--Triangle & Robert
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see

Anton Ertl · External Since: May 21, 2006 Posts: 169

Dances With Crows <danSPANceswithTRAPcrows RemoveThis @gmail.com> writes:
>Floppies are the only medium left where you *can* do a lowlevel format.

You can low-level format (some?) hard disks, but you need a special
tool from the manufacturer, and that runs on MS-DOS (what else:-).

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton RemoveThis @mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html

Shadow_7 · External Since: Nov 01, 2006 Posts: 130

> Obsolete equipment! How wonderful. In Fried Hardware 2 days ago, I saw
> a tiny, fast, hard-to-damage 2G USB keychain drive for $40. That's a
> great argument that it's time to forget floppies.

I got my 2G for $20, the 4G was $40.

mkdosfs -F 12 /dev/fd0

or whatever you want to put on the floppy as far as filesystems go.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0

To ensure that it's blank. Given that most of my floppies are 10 years
old at this point, I don't trust much on them. Not that much fits on
them these days. You can't even get a .pdf or .doc these days that's
less than 1.44MB. But I've got an old PII and 486 around that still
function with floppies so I guess I'm covered for another decade.

Dances With Crows · External Since: Sep 16, 2006 Posts: 307

Shadow_7 staggered into the Black Sun and said:
> Dances With Crows wrote:
>> In Fried Hardware 2 days ago, I saw a tiny, fast, hard-to-damage 2G
>> USB keychain drive for $40.
> I got my 2G for $20, the 4G was $40.

This might've been the case. I didn't buy one as I didn't need one and
I'd already spent enough $ on a new LCD.

> mkdosfs -F 12 /dev/fd0

mkdosfs will automatically use a 12-bit FAT on devices smaller than a
limit (32M?)

> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0 to ensure that it's blank.

Unnecessary; you're already running mkdosfs. The dd might warn you of
bad sectors, but that's it.

> Not that much fits on them these days. You can't even get a .pdf or
> .doc these days that's less than 1.44MB. But I've got an old PII and
> 486 around that still function with floppies

There are plenty of PDFs and DOCs that are under 1.4M. The real
removable-media killer is ubiquitous always-on reasonably-high-speed
Net. And many x86 motherboards still have 34-pin headers for non-USB
non-IDE floppy drives. These may go away in a few years, but I'm not
holding my breath.

--
One RAID to rule them all, One RAID to bind them
One RAID to hold the files and in the darkness grind them
In the land of Server where the Unix lies....
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see

Scott Alfter · External Since: Sep 18, 2006 Posts: 27

In article <slrnfb9umd.8rg.danSPANceswithTRAPcrows DeleteThis @crow202.dyndns.org>,
Dances With Crows <danSPANceswithTRAPcrows DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote:
>Mark Hobley staggered into the Black Sun and said:
>> Michael Black <et472 DeleteThis @freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
>>> Did you look at the man page for fdformat?
>> maybe you mean setfdparm. Remember this is not a real floppy drive,
>> but an LS120. Will that work on an LS120 drive?
>
>fdformat depends on various ioctl()s that are *only* there on a real
>34-pin floppy, and not on IDE- or USB-connected devices. This means
>there's really no way to lowlevel format a 3.5" disk on those devices
>without black magic.

http://www.geocities.jp/tedi_world/format_usbfdd_e.html

This works with the USB floppy drive I keep with my notebook. If the OP
puts a USB-to-IDE adapter between his computer and his LS120 drive, there's
a chance it might also work with that (don't even know if I still have an
LS120 drive with which to test that hypothesis myself).

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