high capacity floppy disk formats for linux

The following shell script was published in
the May, 1997 issue of "The Data Bus"
( a newsletter of the Dayton Microcomputer Association )
on page 6 (tip of the month).

#!/bin/sh

# tip for Linux users

# by Richard L. Hawes (rhawes@dma.org)

echo "\

How to use higher capacity floppy disk formats on the 3.5\"
high density disk drive 0 (drive A): (drive 1 in comments)

First put a low level format format onto floppy disk to have
1KB sectors, 11 sectors per track, no verify and no 2m format.
(1KB sectors x 11 sectors/track x 80 tracks x 2 heads =
1760 kilobytes.)

Please put a blank high density floppy disk into drive 0 (A:)
and then press enter:"

read junk

superformat -d /dev/fd0 -f -s 22 -S 3 --no2m

# drive 1: -d /dev/fd1

echo "\

Create a named set of drive parameters.  Make sure you use
'>>' to append and not '>' which overwrites.  To use the
named parameter enter:\

'setfdprm /dev/fd0 1760/1440'\

'mount -t minix /dev/fd0 /mnt/mx'"

echo "1760/1440 `getfdprm /dev/fd0`">>/etc/fdprm

#drive 1: `getfdprm /dev/fd1`

echo "\

Put a high level minix format on the floppy and check for
bad blocks.

WARNING! you should always use the -c option to check for
bad blocks unless you know what you are doing."

mkfs.minix -c /dev/fd0u1760 1760

# drive 1: /dev/fd1u1760

echo "\

Make the mount point (/mnt/mx)."

mkdir /mnt/mx

echo "\

Put an entry into 'fstab' to make it easy to mount -- use
'mount /dev/fd01760' or 'mount /mnt/mx' to mount or unmount it.
Using 'noauto' mount option so mount will not try to mount
it during start up."

echo "/dev/fd0u1760 /mnt/mx minix noauto">>/etc/fstab

# drive 1: "/dev/fd1u1760"

echo "Now mount it."

mount /mnt/mx

echo "Get free disk space."

df /mnt/mx

echo "Now unmount it."

umount /mnt/mx


- --
Richard L. Hawes  
email: rhawes@dmapub.dma.org   web:  http://www.dma.org/~rhawes