1 .\" Copyright (C) 1993, 1994, 1995 by Joerg Wunsch, Dresden
2 .\" All rights reserved.
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5 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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25 .Dd September 16, 1993
30 .Nd format floppy disks
45 .Op Fl t Ar steps_per_track
49 formats a floppy disk at device
52 should be a character device; it may be given either with a full path
53 name of a raw device node for a floppy disk drive
54 .Pq e.\ g. Pa /dev/rfd0 ,
55 or default name in an abbreviated form
57 In the latter case, the name is constructed by prepending
63 Note that any geometry constraints of the device node
64 .Pq minor device number
65 are meaningless, since they're overridden by
68 The options are as follows:
69 .Bl -tag -width 10n -offset indent
71 Suppress any normal output from the command, and don't ask the
72 user for a confirmation whether to format the floppy disk at
75 The normal way to specify the desired formatting parameters.
77 is the number of kilobytes to format. Valid choices are 360, 720, 800, 820,
78 1200, 1440, 1480 or 1720.
80 Don't verify floppy after formatting.
82 Don't format, verify only.
84 Number of cylinders: 40 or 80.
86 Number of sectors per track: 9, 10, 15 or 18.
88 Number of floppy heads: 1 or 2.
90 Data rate: 250, 300 or 500 kbps.
96 Sector size: 0=128, 1=256, 2=512 bytes.
99 .It Fl t Ar steps_per_track
100 Number of steps per track.
101 An alternate method to specify the geometry data to write to the floppy disk.
106 flag has not been specified, the user is asked for a confirmation
107 of the intended formatting process. In order to continue, an answer
114 does only perform low-level formatting. In case you wish to create
115 a file system on the medium, see the commands
127 has been specified, a single letter is printed to standard output
128 to inform the user about the progress of work.
131 is printed when the track(s) is being formatted, then a
133 while it's being verified, and if an error has been detected, it
134 will finally change to
137 An exit status of 0 is returned upon successful operation. Exit status
138 1 is returned on any errors during floppy formatting, and an exit status
139 of 2 reflects invalid arguments given to the program (along with an
140 appropriate information written to diagnostic output).
147 has been developed for 386BSD 0.1
148 and upgraded to the new
150 floppy disk driver. It later became part of the
154 The program has been contributed by
156 .if t J\(:org Wunsch,
157 Dresden, with changes by
160 .An Andrey A. Chernov ,