Programmer 7500/MAX_PROGRAMMERS.iso/PROGRAMS/UTILS/FLOPPIES/ANYDISK.ZIP/ANYDISK.DOC

Text File | 1988-08-25 | 6.9 KB | 176 lines

ANYDISK.SYS, F4.COM - Floppy disk format extenders

For all those who heard that their 3.5" disk drive could format to 800K...
For all those who watched IBM take the 5.25" floppy frormat from 160K to
    180K to 320K to 360K, and wondered if that was the limit...
For all those who can't afford high-density disks for their 1.2 megabyte
    drives...
For all those who bought 3.5" disk drives, and THEN found out you need
    PC-DOS 3.2 to use them...


                THIS IS FOR YOU!


GENERAL INFORMATION:

    Current floppy disk formats use either 40 or 80 tracks, with nine
or 15 sectors per track, to store data.  This gives 360K or 720K per disk.
But, there is enough space on a disk to reliably add a tenth sector.
There's a number of reasons why Microsoft hasn't added it to MS-DOS.  The
one which might deter them is that it's slower to read.  But, then again,
nine-sector reading was slower than eight-sectors, too...

    Adding the tenth sector yields 400K or 800K per disk.  However,
special drivers are needed for MS-DOS to handle this "new" format. You
could use the DRIVER.SYS file included in MS-DOS 3.2 on up.  But, once
you tell DRIVER.SYS to support 10 sectors, it loses the ability to use
eight or nine, at least on the drive made by DRIVER.SYS.

    In this package is a solution to all the little problems.
There's a disk formatter which handles several different formats, and
produces disks which are indistinguishable from those made with the
MS-DOS "FORMAT.COM".  And, to interface the 10-sector disks to DOS,
there's a ".SYS" driver file.


INSTALLATION:

    On the disk you use to boot your PC, there should be a text file
called "CONFIG.SYS".  If this file doesn't exist, make one.  The file
needs to contain this line:

DEVICE=ANYDISK.SYS A:

The "A:" is the name of a disk drive, and should be changed to the name
of whatever disk drive you want to use.

In addition to having CONFIG.SYS, the boot disk must have the program,
ANYDISK.SYS.  Copy ANYDISK.SYS to the boot disk.

The next time the PC is booted with this disk, the driver called
"ANYDISK.SYS" will be put in place.  The existing disk drives perform
as usual, but DOS will find a new disk drive as well.  For example,
if you installed ANYDISK to a PC/XT with a hard disk drive, you would
have three disk drives normally, tagged "A:" through "C:".  With the
driver in place, a fourth drive, "D:", will appear.  When accessed,
the new drive "D:" will appear to be wired to drive "A:".  However,
the new drive will be able to read disks with ten sectors per track,
which "A:" cannot do.

NEW!    ANYDISK.SYS version 1.2 may be used with any DOS version from
2.00 on up.  ANYDISK supports 720K disk drives, regardless of which
DOS is in use.

USAGE:

F4.COM d: [/f]

    d:    Specifies the floppy drive to format.  If you've
        installed ANYDISK, use the original drive name,
        NOT the new drive name.

    /x    Optionally specifies the format to use.  Skip
        this parameter, and you'll be shown a list of
        formats to choose from.  You can press Ctrl-Break
        if you choose the wrong format.

    F4.COM is a disk formatter.  It supports the usual IBM disk
    formats, and odd formats as well.  A disk made in one of the
    IBM formats is indistinguishable from a disk made with IBM's
    FORMAT.COM, and therefore does not need ANYDISK.SYS for use.
    Odd disk sizes are made in the same way as the IBM formats,
    but with extra sectors per track, or with extra tracks.  The
    extra sectors can only be read by ANYDISK.SYS, but extra
    tracks can usually be used without ANYDISK.SYS.

ANYDISK.SYS [x:]

    x:    Optionally specifies the floppy drive to attach to.
        The default is "A:".

    When this program runs, it will print a notice to the screen.
    If you have MS-DOS 3.0 or later, the notice will be something
    like:

        "Any-size disk driver GEB 1/88"
        "Drive E: attached to drive A:"

    (The second line will be missing if you have DOS 2.0 or 2.1.)
    Once you receive your DOS prompt, you will find a new disk
    drive, located one letter past your last "normal" disk drive.
    Copy files to it, or list a directory of it, and the driver
    will reroute those requests to the original drive. You can
    read genuine DOS disks on the new drive, as well as those
    disks made with strange formats.

    If you have an 80 track, 5.25" disk drive, or a 1.2 megabyte
    disk drive, there is an additional disk format available.
    720K, 80 track disks can be made and read on any of the
    following drives:

        3.5",  80 track, 720K drives
        5.25", 80 track, 720K drives
        5.25", 80 track, 1.2M drives

    Only one of the above drives normally produces 720K disks.
    For the other drives, the programs in this package will
    order the BIOS to make an 80 track disk, instead of the
    40 track disk that would be normally produced.

    WARNING:  You may get an error, "Non-DOS disk", if you
    try to read a disk made with an odd formatter on a virtual
    drive made by "ANYDISK".  (Incidentally, Zenith MS-DOS 3.2
    counts as an "odd" one.)  The solution is simple:  If the
    disk is in a standard format, move over to A: to read it!
    If it's not, then you should copy its contents over to a
    disk made with F4.COM.  Another solution, which seems to
    work for the Zenith MS-DOS's oddity, is to format with the
    /S option.  This is not a perfect solution, because
    FORMAT /S makes the disk bootable, and the boot files take
    up space.

DISCLAIMER:

    This package was designed on a particular machine.  Who knows
    if it will crash on yours?  Try it and find out.  The author
    can't test it on your machine.  That's your job.  If it causes
    you problems, then it MIGHT be your fault.  The point is, this
    program can't be guaranteed.  The author assumes no liability
    for damage resulting from the use of this package.  After all,
    ANYBODY can be dumb enough to respond to a "Write-protect" error
    by changing disks and pressing "Retry"...  If you're not sure
    what that does, try it!  You'll lose a lot of data, I guarantee
    it!

ANYDISK'S RELEASE HISTORY:

    1.2    (maintenance release), on 8/25/88.  The program runs
        exactly as before, but additional support for DOS
        2.x was provided.

    1.2,    released on 8/8/88.  The previous versions damaged a table
        that DOS uses to order the BIOS around.  Now, the ANYDISK
        driver has its own table, and orders the BIOS around from it.
        Also, the program code was "cleaned up".

    1.1.1,    released on 2/17/88.  A bug was fixed, where higher DOS
        versions were resetting disk parameters and making
        ANYDISK give phony "Sector not found" errors during
        long disk reads.  Corrected by resetting the drive to
        ANYDISK's parameters whenever any error occurs.

    1.1,    released on 1/21/88.  Support for 80-track, 720K or more,
        5.25" disks in "AT"-style drives was added.  Also, a
        tiny (one time in 1000) error was fixed, where 64K reads
        were not being properly handled.

    1.0,    released on 1/7/88.  The original!

Address your polite suggestions to:

    GEORGE BREESE
    BOX 428
    MORAVIA, NY 13118