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Re: BlueDisk now available! (was Re: Mystery card!)
sknkwrks@lil-ed.cs.unlv.edu (Scott Alfter) writes:
>In article <2k5hq4$rs@ionews.io.org> taob@ionews.io.org (Brian Tao) quotes:
>(<a2.13.23.265@genie.geis.com> J.LANGE7@genie.geis.com writes:)
>>- MFORMAT (MTools v1.3) won't allow to _change_ the low-level format of
>> the current disk. Blank disks aren't formatted as expected. No GS/OS
>> formatting dialog is presented before formatting begins.
>
>If this mformat is derived from the same mformat I use under Linux,
>then it's not supposed to do a low-level format. mformat's sole
>purpose is to put a FAT filesystem on a device that has already been
>low-level-formatted. (Under Linux, fdformat does a low-level format
>on a floppy disk. Another command is then used to put a filesystem on
>the disk: mkfs (Minix FS), mke2fs (extended FS), or mformat (FAT FS).)
No, it's _not_ the same MFormat. The one that Brian and Joachim are referring
to is the program that is part of my MSDOS Utilities.
The original comment is rather worrying - MFormatt will change the low-level
format of disks on _my_ system! OK, I admit it, I'm using a genuine Apple
SuperDrive and controller card. But other people seem to be able to use it
to reformat disks to different densities with Flopticals, TransDrives, etc.
There may be problems if the BlueDisk returns unusual "format options" which
MFormat uses as part of the low-level format process. Actually, the format
options returned by the Apple card are the reason there is no "formatting
dialogue" before formatting begins. The standard Apple dialogue displays all
the options, but won't let you select 720K! And I really didn't want to
rewrite the dialogue! ;-)
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