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Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995 15:12:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Don's FList drop" <freelist@elf.kendall.mdcc.edu>
To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.tfs.com>
cc: "Christoph P. Kukulies" <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>,
        freebsd-hackers@freefall.freebsd.org
Subject: Re: higher density diskettes 
In-Reply-To: <1337.810473461@critter.tfs.com>
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On Thu, 7 Sep 1995, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> > Microsoft has switched to using so called DMF format
> > (Distribution Media Format - 1,716,224 bytes 1.63 MB) on
> > diskettes for the WIN95 distrubution disks. 
> 
> This is very interesting.  If it works for them, we can do that too.
> The changes to the floppy-build procedure is rather few, but I still
> suggest we hang in there until we hear how much trouble MS has with it...

It's actually not a terribly new idea. I've seen utilities to format 
diskettes at slightly higher capacities for almost as long as I've had a 
PC. I remember 420k 5.25 floppy formatters.......

The primary difficulty is that of being unable to use traditional disk 
copying utilities (ie ones that don't do verbatim sector copies) to 
duplicate the disks. An Inforworld correspondant pointed out with some 
humor that MS continues to distribute instructions in their install 
literature asking users to make backups before installing even though 
this new thing prevented users from doing so. <grin>

If anyone can do a back serch of their old PC Weeks, Jim Louderbach 
included a location of a freeware program that would create the larger 
disk format. Or perhaps grep the simtel index for 'format'....