Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!xanth!rlb
From: rlb@cs.odu.edu (Robert Lee Bailey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: high capacity floppies
Message-ID: <7923@xanth.cs.odu.edu>
Date: 25 Feb 89 08:00:38 GMT
References: <1043@noao.UUCP>
Reply-To: rlb@cs.odu.edu (Robert Lee Bailey)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 33

In article <1043@noao.UUCP> cole@noao.edu (Lonnie Cole) writes:
>This is my first posting to the net so please excuse if I mess up.
>
>I am looking for sources, binaries, info, etc for any device drivers/programs
>which will allow MS-DOS to format/read/write standard double sided/double
>density floppies on a High density drive but to a higher capacity than the
>normal 360k format. Let me explain:
>I have a backup program which uses a high density 96 track AT drive to do
>backups onto ds/dd diskettes (not HD diskettes) but instead of writing in the
>quad density mode it uses double density mode. This allows a disk to be written
>as double density but use 80 tracks instead of the normal 40 allowing for 720k
>as opposed to 360k.
>
>I would like to find something which would allow me to do essentially the same
>thing under DOS. (ds/dd disks are much cheaper than HD disks and at 720k more
>than 1/2 the capacity).
>
>Any help would be greatly appreciated.

What you need is a shareware program called COMFMT.  It is a truly marvelous
program.  It is a TSR formatting program that can be called up with a couple
of keystrokes.  It then proceeds to format floppies in the BACKGROUND!  So
I can use any program and format disks at the same time. (I hate sitting
around waiting for disks to format.)  CONFMT supports all standard DOS
formats (5.25" & 3.5") plus a couple of non-standard such as 720K on 5.25
HD drives.  I have formatted DOZENS of CHEAP 5.25" disks at 720K and it
works great - no errors. One caveat though, you probably will need DOS 3.2
or 3.3 (or a driver for a 720K 3.5").  I use DOS 3.3, and after formatting,
I can treat the 720K diskettes just like a 360K or 1.2M - DOS automatically
recognizes which format is installed in the drive.

You should be able to find CONFMT.ARC on any decent PC BBS.  If you can't,
I might be able to post it here or in comp.binaries.