HP-UX Reference (11i v1 05/09) - 7 Device (Special) Files, 9 General Information, Index (vol 10)

ﬂoppy(7) ﬂoppy(7)

Reformatting ﬂexible disk media from one geometry to another that differs only in that it has fewer tracks

can cause the automatic geometry sensing functionality of

open() to fail to recognize the new media

geometry. Bulk erasing (degaussing) the media or formatting the media to a substantially different

geometry prior to reformatting prevents automatic geometry sensing problems.

Single track formatting may not be supported by some ﬂoppy devices.

Some devices permit conﬁguration for geometries which they are unable to support. The

FLOPPY_SET_GEOMETRY

ioctl for such a conﬁguration may not result in an error. However, subsequent

I/O operations will fail.

DEPENDENCIES

Series 700

Series 700 device special ﬁles reside in the directories

/dev/rfloppy and /dev/floppy.

Series 800

A ﬂexible disk can be opened with no media. However, capacity changes resulting from subsequent media

changes will not be recognized. (See scsi_disk(7)).

Series 800 device special ﬁles reside in the directories

/dev/rdsk and /dev/dsk.

The following table of Series 800 Flexible Disk Media shows the disk geometries supported. The media

inserted in the drive is formatted depending on the presence or absence of the HD hole in the ﬂexible disk

cartridge. HD media is formatted as a 1.44M diskette and DD media is formatted as a 720K diskette.

Media Type Use Capacity Heads Tracks Sectors Sector Size

3.5in DS DD DOS 720K 737,280 2 80 9 512

3.5in DS HD DOS 1.44M 1,474,560 2 80 18 512

The following table shows the density information for the ﬂexible disk media supported:

MediaType BitDensity RPM TransferRate TrackDensity DataEncoding

3.5in DS DD 7,958 300 250 135 MFM

3.5in DS HD 15,916 300 500 135 MFM

The FLOPPY_GET_INFO

and FLOPPY_GET_GEOMETRY ioctls are supported on Series 800.