Re: OT 3.5" floppy question

In article <06729fbf-908c-461a-b705-(E-Mail Removed)>,
George Herold <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Hi guys, If you want to direct me to a different group that is fine.
>I'm wondering if there is a way to format a HD 3.5" floppy to be only
>DD? (HD is high desinity 1.44MB and DD is double density ~720kB, for
>those of tender years.) I've been mucking about in DOS trying the
>"format a: /Fsize)" command with out success. I also tried putting
>some tape on the one corner of the disk to cover up the hole there.

1) DRIVEPARM in the CONFIG.SYS file extends the /F option with
things like /S (sectors per track).

2) There's an old shareware utility named Anadisk that can read and
write anything (that the hardware can read). It's so tricky that when
I was looked if the author was still around to send them some money, the
latest version was only going to be supplied to police organizations for
forensic uses. (Apparently somebody bad was hiding things on floppys).
Circa 1990-1995 in the Simtel Archive. I think the Simtel archive is
still out there, and it was sold on CD-ROM for quite a while until the
Internet ate that market. (Is Steve Walz's FTP site still up. He
had it).

I used it to read Kaypro-4 disks, followed by a Perl script I wrote to
turn a diskette image to files.

3) Linux. The diskette driver uses the file name (the Minor Device
number in a special file Inode, actually) for the drive parameters,
so the format program shouldn't care as long as the floppy controller
can do it. (New enough to be PC/AT compatible, but not new enough to
be stripped down as was done on newer motherboards).

Mark Zenier (E-Mail Removed)
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:13:55 GMT, (E-Mail Removed) (Mark Zenier)
wrote:

>In article <06729fbf-908c-461a-b705-(E-Mail Removed)>,
>George Herold <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>Hi guys, If you want to direct me to a different group that is fine.
>>I'm wondering if there is a way to format a HD 3.5" floppy to be only
>>DD? (HD is high desinity 1.44MB and DD is double density ~720kB, for
>>those of tender years.) I've been mucking about in DOS trying the
>>"format a: /Fsize)" command with out success. I also tried putting
>>some tape on the one corner of the disk to cover up the hole there.
>
>1) DRIVEPARM in the CONFIG.SYS file extends the /F option with
>things like /S (sectors per track).
>
>2) There's an old shareware utility named Anadisk that can read and
>write anything (that the hardware can read). It's so tricky that when
>I was looked if the author was still around to send them some money, the
>latest version was only going to be supplied to police organizations for
>forensic uses. (Apparently somebody bad was hiding things on floppys).
>Circa 1990-1995 in the Simtel Archive. I think the Simtel archive is
>still out there, and it was sold on CD-ROM for quite a while until the
>Internet ate that market. (Is Steve Walz's FTP site still up. He
>had it).
>
>I used it to read Kaypro-4 disks, followed by a Perl script I wrote to
>turn a diskette image to files.
>
>3) Linux. The diskette driver uses the file name (the Minor Device
>number in a special file Inode, actually) for the drive parameters,
>so the format program shouldn't care as long as the floppy controller
>can do it. (New enough to be PC/AT compatible, but not new enough to
>be stripped down as was done on newer motherboards).
>
>Mark Zenier (E-Mail Removed)
>Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

Mark, where the hell have you been, I haven't seen a post from you in
years.

Tom

On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:13:55 GMT (E-Mail Removed) (Mark Zenier) wrote in
Message id: <(E-Mail Removed)>:

>In article <06729fbf-908c-461a-b705-(E-Mail Removed)>,
>George Herold <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>Hi guys, If you want to direct me to a different group that is fine.
>>I'm wondering if there is a way to format a HD 3.5" floppy to be only
>>DD? (HD is high desinity 1.44MB and DD is double density ~720kB, for
>>those of tender years.) I've been mucking about in DOS trying the
>>"format a: /Fsize)" command with out success. I also tried putting
>>some tape on the one corner of the disk to cover up the hole there.
>
>1) DRIVEPARM in the CONFIG.SYS file extends the /F option with
>things like /S (sectors per track).
>
>2) There's an old shareware utility named Anadisk that can read and
>write anything (that the hardware can read). It's so tricky that when
>I was looked if the author was still around to send them some money, the
>latest version was only going to be supplied to police organizations for
>forensic uses. (Apparently somebody bad was hiding things on floppys).
>Circa 1990-1995 in the Simtel Archive. I think the Simtel archive is
>still out there, and it was sold on CD-ROM for quite a while until the
>Internet ate that market. (Is Steve Walz's FTP site still up. He
>had it).
>
>I used it to read Kaypro-4 disks, followed by a Perl script I wrote to
>turn a diskette image to files.

Another great program that's still being worked on is Omniflop.
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm

I use it for reading and writing HP LIF formats.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Tom Biasi <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>Mark, where the hell have you been, I haven't seen a post from you in
>years.

The science fiction and shortwave radio groups, mostly. By the time
I get around to the electronics groups, the questions I can answer
already have been...

Mark Zenier (E-Mail Removed)
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)