Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!saturn!ucscb.UCSC.EDU!lcc
From: lcc@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (73701000)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport
Subject: Re: screwy format message
Keywords: software, 386/3.0e
Message-ID: <8249@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 2 Jul 89 00:44:50 GMT
References: <1003@hawkmoon.MN.ORG>
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: lcc@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Ken Chapin)
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz; CATS
Lines: 20

In article <1003@hawkmoon.MN.ORG> det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) writes:
>Whenever i try to format my (new) 3.5" floppy (1.44M) with a 720K diskette in
>it i get the following message:
>
>$ format /dev/rdsk/f13dt	#lo density device name;  f13ht = hi density
>formatting.
>Formatted 0 tracks: 0 thru 4294967295, interleave 1.
>
>What does this mean?  Is my format broken and is there a newer one out there
>that i can get that will work better?
>

I put a newer format on the bbs in mid February but I don't think that it is
going to resolve that problem. Format works by doing an ioctl on the 
device that was opened to get the geometry info. There is a coding scheme
built into the minor device number of the file (device node) that was opened
and in it contains info such as hi/low density, etc. My guess is that you've
got some way bogus minor device number for f13ht or a corrupted binary.

Ken