| 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 | .\" |
| 5 | .\" @(#)rxformat.8 6.1 (Berkeley) %G% |
| 6 | .\" |
| 7 | .TH RXFORMAT 8V "" |
| 8 | .UC 5 |
| 9 | .SH NAME |
| 10 | rxformat \- format floppy disks |
| 11 | .SH SYNOPSIS |
| 12 | .B /etc/rxformat |
| 13 | [ |
| 14 | .B \-d |
| 15 | ] special |
| 16 | .SH DESCRIPTION |
| 17 | The |
| 18 | .I rxformat |
| 19 | program formats a diskette in the specified drive |
| 20 | associated with the special device |
| 21 | .IR special . |
| 22 | ( |
| 23 | .I Special |
| 24 | is normally /dev/rx0, for drive 0, or /dev/rx1, |
| 25 | for drive 1.) |
| 26 | By default, the diskette is formatted single density; |
| 27 | a |
| 28 | .B \-d |
| 29 | flag may be supplied to force double density formatting. |
| 30 | Single density is compatible |
| 31 | with the IBM 3740 standard (128 bytes/sector). |
| 32 | In double density, each sector |
| 33 | contains 256 bytes of data. |
| 34 | .PP |
| 35 | Before formatting a diskette |
| 36 | .I rxformat |
| 37 | prompts for verification (this allows a user to cleanly |
| 38 | abort the operation; note that |
| 39 | formatting a diskette will destroy any existing data). |
| 40 | Formatting is done by the hardware. |
| 41 | All sectors are zero-filled. |
| 42 | .SH DIAGNOSTICS |
| 43 | `No such device' means that the drive is not ready, |
| 44 | usually because no disk is in the drive or the drive door is open. |
| 45 | Other error messages are selfexplanatory. |
| 46 | .SH FILES |
| 47 | /dev/rx? |
| 48 | .SH SEE ALSO |
| 49 | rx(4V) |
| 50 | .SH BUGS |
| 51 | A floppy may not be formatted if the |
| 52 | header info on sector 1, track 0 has been damaged. Hence, it is not |
| 53 | possible to format a completely degaussed disk. |
| 54 | (This is actually a problem in the hardware.) |
| 55 | .SH AUTHOR |
| 56 | Helge Skrivervik |