ANSIfication; bug report 4.3BSD/bin/223
[unix-history] / usr / src / old / rxformat / rxformat.8
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1.\" Copyright (c) 1983 Regents of the University of California.
2.\" All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
3.\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
4.\"
8e2edef7 5.\" @(#)rxformat.8 6.3 (Berkeley) %G%
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7ae62f7c 7.TH RXFORMAT 8V ""
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8.UC 5
9.SH NAME
10rxformat \- format floppy disks
11.SH SYNOPSIS
12.B /etc/rxformat
13[
14.B \-d
15] special
16.SH DESCRIPTION
17The
18.I rxformat
19program formats a diskette in the specified drive
20associated with the special device
21.IR special .
22(
23.I Special
7ae62f7c 24is normally /dev/rx0, for drive 0, or /dev/rx1,
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25for drive 1.)
26By default, the diskette is formatted single density;
27a
28.B \-d
29flag may be supplied to force double density formatting.
30Single density is compatible
31with the IBM 3740 standard (128 bytes/sector).
32In double density, each sector
33contains 256 bytes of data.
34.PP
35Before formatting a diskette
36.I rxformat
8461d308
JB
37prompts for verification if standard input is a tty
38(this allows a user to cleanly
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39abort the operation; note that
40formatting a diskette will destroy any existing data).
41Formatting is done by the hardware.
42All sectors are zero-filled.
43.SH DIAGNOSTICS
44`No such device' means that the drive is not ready,
45usually because no disk is in the drive or the drive door is open.
46Other error messages are selfexplanatory.
47.SH FILES
48/dev/rx?
49.SH SEE ALSO
50rx(4V)
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51.SH AUTHOR
52Helge Skrivervik
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53.SH BUGS
54A floppy may not be formatted if the
55header info on sector 1, track 0 has been damaged. Hence, it is not
56possible to format a completely degaussed disk.
57(This is actually a problem in the hardware.)