How to format an 8" disk with Unix???

Ed Zagmoon

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Nov 28, 2006, 11:28:40 PM11/28/06

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I can't afford modern 5.25" or even 3,5" disk drives,
so I have to use my 8" drive and 8" disks.

But how can I format 8" disks?

Pascal Bourguignon

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Nov 28, 2006, 11:54:12 PM11/28/06

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"Ed Zagmoon" <sparta...@yahoo.com> writes:

fdformat /dev/fd0d360

well, at least on linux. You didn't say on what unix you're working...

A 3.5" Sony floppy drive costs 9€ and a pack of 10 3.5" floppies costs
3€: total 12€, and it will work better than an old 8" floppy. And I'm
sure you could find easily hundreds of free floppies, nobody use them
anymore... Are you Robert Maas?

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

"This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual Opteron 850
processors if I am to do battle with this code!"

Rafael Almeida

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Nov 29, 2006, 10:45:00 AM11/29/06

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On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 05:54:12 +0100
Pascal Bourguignon <p...@informatimago.com> wrote:

> A 3.5" Sony floppy drive costs 9€ and a pack of 10 3.5" floppies costs
> 3€: total 12€, and it will work better than an old 8" floppy. And I'm
> sure you could find easily hundreds of free floppies, nobody use them
> anymore... Are you Robert Maas?

You're probably right about that. But you should notice that not
everyone lives on europe or any other developed country, for that
matter. There are places in the world where it might be really
difficult to buy computer stuff. Cuba, for instance, it's very hard for
them to even access the internet, I wouldn't be surprise if there are
lots of really old computers still in use over there. As far as I know,
the only means they have to acess the internet is a italian satellite
and they have very limited band.

Alex Colvin

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Nov 30, 2006, 9:22:39 AM11/30/06

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>I can't afford modern 5.25" or even 3,5" disk drives,
>so I have to use my 8" drive and 8" disks.
>But how can I format 8" disks?

take a pair of scissors and trim the outer 2.75"?
--
mac the naïf

Bill Marcum

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Nov 30, 2006, 12:22:03 PM11/30/06

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On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 05:54:12 +0100, Pascal Bourguignon
<p...@informatimago.com> wrote:
> "Ed Zagmoon" <sparta...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> I can't afford modern 5.25" or even 3,5" disk drives,
>> so I have to use my 8" drive and 8" disks.
>>
>> But how can I format 8" disks?
>

The only computer I know that uses(used) 8-inch drives and runs(ran) some
form of *ix is the TRS-80 model II/16/6000 (model II with the 68000 CPU
upgrade). On those machines, to format a floppy disk you type "diskutil"
at the boot prompt.

>
> fdformat /dev/fd0d360
>
> well, at least on linux. You didn't say on what unix you're working...
>

fd0360 is for an old low density 5.25" drive (40 track, 2 side, 18
sectors, 512 bytes/sector). The OP didn't say whether his drives were
single or double sided, or single or double density. In any event, if you
seriously want to use 8-inch disks in Linux, you probably need to install
fdutils and format the disks with superformat. 8-inch floppies have 77
tracks, while 3.5 and HD 5-inch disks have 80. These days you can often
find whole Pentium II/III systems in the trash, or in thrift stores for
under $20, so the only reason I can see to use 8-inch floppies is to
recover old data (and if the data is worth anything, why would you have
waited this long?)

>
> A 3.5" Sony floppy drive costs 9¤ and a pack of 10 3.5" floppies costs
> 3¤: total 12¤, and it will work better than an old 8" floppy. And I'm
> sure you could find easily hundreds of free floppies, nobody use them
> anymore... Are you Robert Maas?
>
>

--
"It ain't over until it's over."
-- Casey Stengel