Name

       floppymeter - measure raw capacity and exact rotation speed of floppy drive

Note

       This  manpage  has  been  automatically  generated  from  fdutils's texinfo documentation.  However, this
       process is only approximative, and some items, such as cross-references, footnotes and indices  are  lost
       in  this  translation  process.   Indeed,  these  items have no appropriate representation in the manpage
       format.  Moreover, only the items specific  to  each  command  have  been  translated,  and  the  general
       information about fdutils has been dropped in the manpage version.  Thus I strongly advise you to use the
       original texinfo doc.

       *      To generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run the following commands:

                     ./configure; make dvi; dvips fdutils.dvi

       *      To generate a HTML copy,  run:

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       *      To generate an info copy (browsable using emacs' info mode), run:

                     ./configure; make info

       The  texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as HTML.  Indeed, in the info version certain examples
       are difficult to read due to the quoting conventions used in info.

Description

          floppymeter [-f] [-w warmup-delay] [-W window]
          [-c cycles] [-h] drive

       The floppymeter program measures characteristic parameters of a floppy drive and floppy controller,  such
       as  the  rotation  speed  of  the  drive, the data transfer rate of the controller, and the resulting raw
       capacity of a disk track.  To use this program, insert  a  disposable  floppy  in  the  drive,  and  type
       floppymeter  --density, where density describes the density of the disk used for the test. (Should be one
       of dd, hd or ed). CAUTION: the data on the disk will be erased.  This program should be  used  to  verify
       whether  the drive and controller are out of tolerance if you experience problems with some high capacity
       formats.  It only needs to be run once per drive: although a disk is needed to perform the  measurements,
       the measured data only depend on the drive and the controller, and not on the disk.

       To  measure  the  raw  capacity of the disk track, the floppymeter program formats the first track of the
       drive in a special way that allows it to read the raw data (gaps and headers) of the disk. Thus, all data
       previously stored on that disk is lost.

       The rotation speed is measured by timing the return time of a readid command.   In  order  to  gain  more
       precision,  the  command  is issued many times in a row. During this phase, the number of rotations since
       the start of the test, the average time per rotation since the start, and a sliding average of the  times
       of the last 30 rotations is printed, and updated continuously.

       The data transfer rate is deduced from the two parameters above.

       At  the  end  of  the  program, all parameters (raw capacity, duration of one rotation, and data transfer
       rate) are printed again, as well as their relative deviation to the standard value.  Finally, it suggests
       a capacity deviation description line, which can be directly pasted into the drive definition  file  (See
       section Drive descriptions.).

       Usually,  the  data  transfer  rate should not deviate more than 150 ppm from the expected value, and the
       rotation speed of the drive should not deviate more than 3000 ppm from  the  expected  value.   If  these
       deviations are bigger, you may get problems with certain high capacity formats.

       If  the  raw  capacity  of the drive is too small, some high capacity formats may become unformattable on
       this drive/controller combo.

       If on the other hand, the raw capacity of the drive is too big, you may get problems when  writing  to  a
       disk  formatted  by  this  drive  on  another  drive with a smaller raw capacity. In order to avoid this,
       increase superformats gap parameter (-G).

       -h     Prints a short help

       --dd   Tells the program that we use a Double Density disk.

       --hd   Tells the program that we use a High Density disk.

       --ed   Tells the program that we use an Extra Density disk.

       -f     Runs  the  measurement  non  interactively.   With  this  option,  the  program  doesn't  ask  for
              confirmation,  and  doesn't  display  the  continuously  updated  values during the rotation speed
              measurement.

       -W Window
              This value describes how many rotations are used for  the  computation  of  the  sliding  average.
              Default is 30.

       -c cycles
              Describes  the  number of rotations clocked during the rotations speed determination test. Default
              is 1000.

Bugs

       This program is quite new, and may have bugs. Here are a few suggested tests to check its sanity:

       *      The deviation of the data transfer rate solely  depends  on  the  controller.  It  should  not  be
              different  between  two drives connected to the same controller. However, the drive rotation speed
              may be different for different drives.

       *      All data transfer rates (for double, high and extra  density)  are  derived  from  a  same  master
              frequency. Thus the deviation of the data transfer rate should be independent of the density used.

See Also

       Fdutils' texinfo doc

fdutils-5.6                                          27Jan21                                      floppymeter(1)