10 Jan
2003
10 Jan
'03
4:09 a.m.
On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Jim Strickland wrote:
XP did, indeed fuck with the FORMAT program. In 98, they stopped
supporting "/F:2", but retained the other ways of formatting a 720K. In
XP, they even dropped "/F:20"!!
BUT, you can still format a 720K in XP, by using "/T:80/N:9"
To repeat what I wrote on 10/24/2002 ("Rise and fall of FORMAT"):
1.00 had 160K (SS, 8 SPT)
1.25/ PC-DOS 1.10 added 320K (DS), with /1 option for FORMAT for doing SS
2.00 added 180K and 360K (9 SPT), with /8 option for FORMAT for doing 8
SPT
2.11 some manufacturers added support for 3.5", but it was specific to
each of their customized version of MS-DOS
3.00 added 1.2M, with /4 option for FORMAT for doing 360K (in 1.2M drive)
3.20 added 720K, with /T:80 /N:9 being used to specify 720K
3.30 added 1.4M, added /F:2 for 720K to be easier to remember
5.00? added /F:720 to be easier to remember.
Windoze 98 dropped /F:2
Windoze XP dropped /F:720. /F:x is still supported, but only for
x == 1.44. /T:x/N:y is still supported, and is the only way to format
anything other than 1.4M. T can be 40 or 80, N can be 8, 9, or 15
T and N are used for selecting from an internal menu; they can not be set
to other values like a true variable.
With it, you can still do:
/T:80 /N:9 720K
/T:80 /N:8 640K Hmmm! haven't seen that one since the Toshiba T300!
/T:40 /N:9 360K
/T:40 /N:8 320K
/T:80 /N:15 1.2M
You can NOT do /T:40 /N:15, (you must choose between supported formats.)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
Surreal. I
just tried to format a 720 in my new WinXP portable and
the size wasn't even a option. And when I did it through the GUI
under 2000 the anti-virus scanner had a fit. Finally had to format it
using the CLI *and* I had to explicitly unmount it first to get the
anti-virus software to let go.
Weird. You should be able to format a 720 in any
1.44 meg floppy
drive, if memory serves they were designed to be backward compatible
like that. My floppy drive on my PC dates back to my 286 days, so it's
old enough that I haven't had any problems. Don't know anything about
XP though, and don't care either. I'm a happy OS/X user. :)