Name¶
xdfcopy - copy and format XDF disks in Linux
Note¶
This manpage has been automatically generated from fdutils's texinfo
documentation. However, this process is only approximative, and some items,
such as cross-references, footnotes and indices are lost in this translation
process. Indeed, these items have no appropriate representation in the manpage
format. Moreover, only the items specific to each command have been
translated, and the general information about fdutils has been dropped in the
manpage version. Thus I strongly advise you to use the original texinfo doc.
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- To generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run the following
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./configure; make dvi; dvips fdutils.dvi
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A pre-made HTML can be found at: `http://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/fdutils'
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./configure; make info
The texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as HTML. Indeed, in the info
version certain examples are difficult to read due to the quoting conventions
used in info.
Description¶
xdfcopy [- format-id] [-d] [-n] [-h head-skew] [-t cylinder-skew] [-T
end-cylinder] [source] target
Xdfcopy is a utility to copy and format XDF disks. XDF (eXtended Density Format)
is a format used by OS/2 which can hold 1840KB of data (on a 3 1/2 high
density disk). Its advantage over 2m formats is that it is faster: 38KB/s.
Because of this fast speed, I extended the XDF standard to higher capacities
(1992KB) with a transfer rate of 45KB/s. I called the new formats XXDF.
This program works best with kernels newer than 2.0.0.
If both source and target are given, xdfcopy copies the disk image from file to
floppy disk or vice-versa. When copying to a floppy disk, the disk is first
formatted, unless the -n option is given.
If no source is given, the target is only formatted. In this case, the target
must be a floppy drive.
Options¶
Formats are selected by the format_id. The following formats are understood:
- 0
- Formats a 5 1/4 XDF disk (1520 KB, 45.6 KB/s).
- 1
- Formats a 3 1/2 high density XDF disk (1840 KB, 38.3 KB/s).
- 2
- Formats a 3 1/2 extra density XDF disk (3680 KB, 102 KB/s)
- 3
- Formats a 3 1/2 high density XXDF disk (1920 KB, 45 KB/s)
- 4
- Formats a 3 1/2 extra density XXDF disk (3840 KB, 90 KB/s)
Misc options¶
- -D dosdrive
- Describes the DOS drive letter for mformat. If this option is given, an
MS-DOS filesystem is automatically installed on the disk after the
low-level format is complete. In order for this to work, the drive has to
be configured to accept the 23x2x80 geometry in your /etc/mtools or your
~/.mtoolsrc file. Moreover, this only works with a version of mtools that
is more recent than 3.0.
- Example of a working mtoolsrc line:
A /dev/fd0 0 0 0 0
- Examples of a non-working mtoolsrc line:
A /dev/fd0 12 80 2 18
- -n
- Don't format the disk before copying the disk image to the disk.
Options for power users¶
- -t cylinder skew
- Uses a different track skew than the default (14). For more details on
skews, see section superformat. In this version of xdfcopy, the -t
parameter is ignored.
- -h head skew
- Uses a different head skew than the default (0) In this version, this
parameter is ignored
- -d
- Debugging. For each read or write operation, the time it took to complete
the operation is printed (in milliseconds). This can be used to optimize
the skews.
- -T end-cylinders
- Tells how many cylinders to format. With the XXDF formats, it is actually
possible to format up to 83 cylinders, yielding a format of up to 1992KB
on a 3 1/2 high density disk.
See Also¶
Fdutils' texinfo doc