MyFormat v1.0 © 1995 by Daniel J. Andrea II NOTE: This software is offered as GIFTWARE. If you like it, then you can send me something in payment of your choice (other programs, disks, computers, cars, etc.) at the address at the end of this document. No warranty of any kind is offered with this software or implied, or for suitability of purpose. It's use is entirely at your own risk. No fees can be charged for this software, other than the nominal fees for the cost of magnetic media and copying of the software onto that media, not to exceed the amount of US $5 for a disk containing this software. Copies of this software must include this documentation file for redistribution through Fred Fish or other similar software collections. What is it? =========== MyFormat is a replacement for the Format command. I wrote this because of the original Format that came with both OS2.1 and OS3.1 was severly lacking several handy features which I found useful from Olaf Barthel & MXM's Format replacement. I also found that their program didn't draw the gadgets properly under OS3.1, thus MyFormat was born. MyFormat works under both OS2.x and OS3.x, allowing certain extras under OS3.x. When operating under OS2.x, both OFS and FFS, with or without International mode is available. Under OS3.x, Directory Caching is available. MyFormat does require at least KickStart v37 to run. Installation ============ To install, simply copy MyFormat and it's icon to your SYS:System directory. If you want to replace the original Format command, rename MyFormat to Format. MyFormat will work exactly as the original when called from the Workbench. Usage ===== Usage of MyFormat is similar to Format. All the command line arguments from Format are supported, along with some extras for the new features. MyFormat can format disks with or without verifying, and can install a valid bootblock which will work for both OS2.x and OS3.x. There are two new command line arguments, INSTALL and NOVERIFY. INSTALL tells MyFormat to install a valid 2.x/3.x Bootblock to make the disk bootable. NOVERIFY tells MyFormat to turn off verification of the tracks as they are written to the disk. The rest of the arguments work the same as the original Format's arguments as listed in the DOS reference manual. If MyFormat is started by double-clicking its icon or from the shell with no arguments, it will open a window on the Workbench screen with several gadgets. The Drives gadget shows the available disk drives attached to the system. Just below it is the Size gadget, which shows the number of tracks and the size of the drive in megabytes. At the bottom of the window under the Drives gadget is a status window which shows the current operations of MyFormat. To the right is several checkbox gadgets, and a cycle gadget. The cycle gadget selects the FileSystem to use for formatting. Verify Writes turns on and off verification. Install Disk turns on Bootblock installation. Create Icons creates the disk and Trashcan icons for the disk. The Auto Start function is used to set a two second delay for auto-formatting of a disk inserted into any of the available drives. This feature allows almost hands-free operation for multiple disk formatting. This option is not available from the command line. The last gadgets are the Name, Start, Quick, and Stop gadgets in the bottom of the window. The Name gadget is a text gadget into which you can enter the volume name for the disk to be formatted. Default name is "Empty". The Start gadget starts formatting the whole disk, and the Quick gadget starts formatting using the quick-format option. The format can be interrupted at any time by pressing the Stop gadget. During formatting operations several of the gadgets are disabled which are options that cannot be changed. Those which are not disabled may be changed at any time during format operations. Note: The Drive gadget does not show as disabled under OS2.x because there is currently no way to disable that type of gadget under OS2.x. Any activity in or on that gadget will be ignored by the program during format operations. Bugs ==== There are no known bugs at this time. If you find any, please contact me at the E-Mail address or Snail-Mail address below with bug reports. Be sure to include information on what other software was running and what kind of system you have. Bug fixes will be incorporated into MyFormat as soon as possible. Note: I have received some complaints about the size information not being correct for some devices. There is a program called ReadDevice included in this archive. It is a Shell only program for reading device info from the Dos.library's devicelist in memory. For example, to read info on DF0:, type this: readdevice df0 or for redirecting the output readdevice >t:temp df0 this will produce output to the standard output, in this case the shell's console. Redirect the output of the program using standard file redirection and include the output of the program in an e-mail letter to the address below. This should help me figure out how to correct the problem. Also, include info about what software is used to run the device, i.e. CrossDOS for PC format floppies, etc. History ======= v1.0 -- Initial release. v1.01 -- Fixed minor bug in setting of Use_Filesystem gadget during startup and selection of drive to format. Also recompiled with SAS/C v6.55 v1.02 -- Changed operation of Use_Filesystem gadget so that it is disabled on disks not using the standard Amiga Filesystem. e.g. PC formatted disks, PFS formatted disks, etc. v1.03 -- Changed arrangement of gadgets and how MyFormat responds to Workbench menu originated formats. v1.04 -- OOPS! Bug creeped in during rearrangement of gadgets in 1.03 regarding Auto Start. Fixed so that Auto Start defaults to whole disk formatting. v1.05 -- Altered Auto Start code to notify user at end of format with a DisplayBeep call. v1.06 -- Changed disk change sensing method to recognize all diskchanges. This change was needed because the A3000's scsi.device didn't recognize the command I originally used for sensing disk changes. This should now work with all removable media drives. It works fine with my Iomega Zip drive on the A3000 scsi.device as unit 5. v1.07 -- Found a bug in the disk type and size sensing code for non-Amiga formatted disks. This mainly affected disks greater than 50 megs (the OFS size limit). Now works. Also has been recompiled with SAS/C 6.56. Also, this is first version to be uploaded to Aminet. v1.08 -- Fix minor bug in size info calulations which caused some really weird size info to be placed in the size gadget. Bug did not affect formatting the disk, just the size reported in the window. Thanks to Jon Peterson for help in tracking this down. Author ====== I can be contacted through Internet E-Mail at: dandrea@mail.tfs.net or through Snail-Mail at: Daniel J. Andrea II 1331 Metropolitan St. Leavenworth, KS 66048 U.S.A. MyFormat was developed on an Amiga 500 with a Microbotics VXL*30/RAM*32 accelerator and on a 25 MHz A3000 using SAS/C v6.55 & v6.56. Future ====== I am planning to add bad sector allocation as soon as I get further documentation on allocating sectors through the filing system. I have used BFormat and liked the ability to use disks even if they have bad sectors. BFormat, though, would only work on FFS/OFS disks. Since I use the Professional Filing System on some of my disks, and BFormat doesn't work on anything but FFS/OFS, once I figure out how to tell any filing system how to allocate sectors I'll add this on. If info on doing this with any file system cannot be obtained, then I will add this for OFS/FFS floppies as soon as possible. Note (19-Nov-96): I am currently working on the bad sector allocation routines. Expect an archive to be uploaded to Aminet within the next couple of weeks (I hope).