Subj : 2.88 MB Floppy Operations?
To   : Mike Luther
From : Vitus Jensen
Date : Thu Mar 15 2001 11:52 pm

Moin Mike!

13.03.2001, Mike Luther wrote a message to Tobias Ernst:

 TE>> Yes, but this narrower read pattern is not a 2.88 MB 
 TE>> format - your 1.44 MB drive simply can NOT handle 
 TE>> this. It is only a slightly more dense format, 
 TE>> something like 1.7 MB IIRC.

 ML> The ... somehow, can we, somehow format floppy disks in the XDFormat
 ML> mode which will let us still have two disk BOOTOS2 disks?

 ML> I'm still chasing an XDFormat deal of some kind that actually works
 ML> with OS/2,  but several utilities I've tried all fail...

The XDF format is copyrighted "Backup Technologies, Tampa", that may be the 
reason why virtually nobody is able to process it (other than bitcopying or 
using IBM utilities under the hood).

What do you make of the following description?  I could convince myself that 
this mean that one is able to create a 1.84MB ramdisk, copy files into it and 
dump the filled ramdisk to floppy.  But read yourself:

=====================<start>================================
svd120.zip        127K  1/05/99
        Super Virtual Disk driver V1.20 for OS/2 2.1+. SVDisk provides a 
swappable/lockable/removable virtual disk or virtual floppy using OS/2's 
advanced memory management facility. Virtual disk can be anything from 16KB to 
128MB, and virtual floppy supports 360KB to 2.88MB devices, including XDF 
device for managing XDF diskette images in OS/2 Warp Version 3. Virtual floppy 
device can be dynamically reconfigured. You can even create large SVDisks on a 
system with just 4MB of RAM! HPFS formatting and diskette support for SVDisk. 
Command line and PM utility provide complete control of the SVDisks.

       - eXtended Density Format (XDF) support for OS/2 Warp V3 XDF
         diskette image files.  This includes 1.52MB, 1.84MB and 3.68MB
         XDF diskettes.  Utility is included to transfer XDF image file
         to and from XDF VFloppy.
======================<end>=================================


AFAIR OS/2 is able to read floppies created by VGACOPY and VGACOPY is able to 
format a 1.44 MB medium to 1722 KB.  I'm sure you remember VGACOPY?


I do have an entry in my "get hold of it" list which contains the following 
description:

=====================<start>================================
        BPC-XDF.ARJ  
        -[PRO]-   =XDF FORMAT DESC.=    -[PRO]-
        ³ -ÄÄÄ -ÄÄÄÄÄÄ-ÄÄÄ-ÄÄ-ÄÄÄÄÄÄ-Ä ÄÄ-ÄÄÄÄ
        ³ Well,  it's the XDF  diskettes format 
        ³ description. C++ source to read/write 
        ³ XDF disks!                            
        ³ [06/03/95]ùÄ;
======================<end>=================================

Perhaps you have more luck when searching for it?


Bye,
   Vitus

PS: I *do* have used 2.88 floppy drives in the past and there is just now such 
a drive in front of me.  Unfortunately it's from a PS/2 and does not have a 
power connector.  Made by Mitsubishi, manufactured for IBM Corporation in 1993.
---
 * Origin: Windows 47.4.  Finally, they got it right! (2:2474/424.1)

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