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Name

       fdrawcmd - send raw commands to the floppy disk controller

Note

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Description

          fdrawcmd [drive=drive] [rate=rate]
          [length=length] [repeat=repeat]
          [cylinder=physical-cyl] command [parameters ...] [mode]

       fdrawcmd is used to send raw commands to the floppy disk controller, after having selected
       a given drive. You must have write permission to the selected drive.

       When  writing to a disk, data is read from stdin; when reading, data is printed to stdout.
       Diagnostic messages, return values from the controller, and the value of the  disk  change
       line after the command are printed to stderr.

Options

       All numbers may be given in octal (0211), decimal (137), or hexadecimal (0x89).

       drive=drive
              Selects the drive.  The default is drive 0 (`/dev/fd0').

       rate=rate
              Selects  the data transfer rate. Use 0 for high density disks, 1 for double density
              5 1/4 disks (or 2 Mbps tapes, if the appropriate rate table is selected), and 2 for
              double density 3 1/2 disks.

       length=length
              Describes  the length of the transferred data for commands reading from and writing
              to the disk.  The default is to continue until end of file.

       repeat=count
              Repeat the command count times.  This only works correctly for commands which don't
              do any data transfer.

       cylinder=count
              Seek to the given cylinder before executing the command

       command
              The  name  of the command to send.  command may be a spelled out name (like read or
              write), or a number representing the commands floppy  disk  controller  opcode.   A
              named  command has already a mode associated with it, whereas for a number the mode
              parameter should be described using the mode option.

       parameters
              The parameters for the command (optional, not all commands need parameters).

       mode   Various flags or'ed together describing the properties of the command.

Commands

       The description of the various floppy commands given in this manpage is very sketchy.  For
       more details get the 82078 spec sheet which can be found at:

          http://www-techdoc.intel.com/docs/periph/fd_contr/datasheets/

       Look  for  the  chapter COMMAND SET/DESCRIPTIONS.  Older FDCs only support a subset of the
       commands described therein, but the syntax for the commands that do exist is the same.

   Commands available on all FDCs
       read drvsel cyl head sect szcod spt rw-gap szcod2
              Reads length bytes of data from the disk.  drvsel is the drive selector. Bit 0  and
              1  describe the drive, and bit 2 describes the head.  The remaining parameters give
              the cylinder, head (yes, again), sector, size of the sector  (128  *  2  ^  szcod),
              sectors  per  track  (spt, this is used to switch to the second head when the first
              side has been read), and size of the read-write gap. szcod2 should be  0xff.   read
              returns  ST0  ST1  ST2  and  cyl head sect szcod of the next sector to be read; see
              `/usr/include/linux/fdreg.h' .

              N.B. Certain newer  floppy  disk  controllers  are  buggy,  and  do  not  correctly
              recognize  the  end of transfer when operating in virtual DMA mode.  For these, you
              need to set spt to the id of the last sector to be read (for example, if you intend
              to  read sectors 2, 3, 4, set spt to 4, even if the disk has more sectors), and set
              the no-mt flag.

       write drvsel cyl head sect szcod spt rw-gap szcod2
              Analogous to read.

       sense drvsel
              Returns the third status byte (ST3)

       recalibrate drvsel
              Recalibrates the drive and returns ST0 ST1.

       seek drvsel cyl
              Moves the head to cyl and returns ST0 ST1.

       specify drvsel spec1 spec2
              Specify various parameters to the drive.

       format drvsel szcod sect-per-track fmt-gap fmt-fill
              Formats the cylinder. The  new  sectors  are  filled  with  fmt-fill.   The  header
              information  comes  from  the  input,  which  is  made  up  of  cyl head sect szcod
              quadruples. The szcod parameter from the command  line  is  used  to  describe  the
              actual  size of the sectors, and the szcod from the input is used to write into the
              header. However, the first write to these sectors will use the header  information,
              and  might  overwrite the following sectors if the szcod parameter from the command
              line was too small.

       readid drvsel
              reads the first sector header that comes and returns ST0 ST1 ST2 and cyl head  sect
              szcod of the encountered header.

   Commands available on 82072 and later
       dumpregs
              Prints the contents of the FDCs registers, if supported.

   Commands available on 82072A and later
       configure conf1 conf2 conf3
              Configures FIFO operation.

   Commands available on 82077 and later
       version
              Echoes 0x90 if the FDC is more recent than 82072A, and 0x80 otherwise

       perpendicular rate
              Sets  the perpendicular mode.  Use 0 for normal, 2 for 500kb/s perpendicular, and 3
              for 1 Mb/s perpendicular.

       seek_out drvsel n
              does a relative seek of n cylinders towards cylinder 0.

       seek_in  drvsel n
              does a relative seek of n cylinders away from cylinder 0.

   Commands available on 82077AA and later
       lock   Locks the FIFO configuration, so that it survives a FDC software reset.

       unlock
              Unlock the FIFO configuration

   Commands available on 82078
       partid
              echoes a byte describing the type of the FDC in the 3 high bits, and  the  stepping
              in the three low bits.

       powerdown powerconf
              configures automatic power down of the FDC. The old configuration is echoed

       option iso
              enables/disables  ISO formats. Odd values of iso enable these formats, whereas even
              values disable them. ISO formats don't have index headers, and thus  allow  one  to
              fit slightly more data on a disk.

       save   prints out 16 internal registers of the FDC.

       restore r1 r2 r3 ... r16
              restores the 16 internal registers of the FDC.

       format_n_write drvsel szcod sect-per-track fmt-gap fmt-fill
              formats  the cylinder and writes initial data to it. The input data is made up of a
              sequence of headers (4 bytes) and data: header1 data1  header2  data2  ...  headern
              datan

       drivespec dspec1 dspec2 ... specn terminator
              chooses rate tables for various drives. Each dspec byte describes one drive. Bits 0
              and 1 say which drive is described. Bits 2 and 3  describe  the  rate  table.  Only
              tables  0  and 2 are interesting. Both tables only differ in the meaning of rate 1.
              For table 0 (the default) rate 0 is 300 kb/s (used for 5 1/4 DD disks), whereas for
              table  1  it  is  2  Mbps  (used  for  fast  floppy  tape  drives).  Bit  4  is the
              precompensation table select bit. It should be set to 0. Bit 5-7 should be zero  as
              well. The terminator byte ends the drivespec command. It is either 0xc0 or 0x80. If
              it is 0xc0, no result phase follows; if it is 0x80, the  current  data  rate  table
              configuration for the four drives is echoed.

Modes

       The  mode  option  is only needed when you describe the command as a numerical value. Some
       mode names are also valid command names. They  are  considered  as  command  name  if  the
       command name has not yet been given, and as mode name otherwise.

        If  you  give  a  command name followed by explicit modes, both the implicit flags of the
       command name, and the explicit modes are or'ed together.

        If on the other hand you give a  command  name  preceded  by  explicit  modes,  only  the
       explicit modes are or'ed together.

       read   Read data from disk using DMA.

       write  Write data to the disk.

       intr   Wait for an interrupt.

       spin   wait for the disk to spin up

       disk   Aborts  the operation if no disk is in the drive. This only works if you also chose
              a physical cylinder to seek to.

       no-motor
              Don't switch on the drive motor while issuing the command

       no-motor-after
              Switch off the motor immediately after the command returns.

       fm     Uses the FM version of the read, readid, write and format commands.

       no-mt  Do not use MT (multitrack) mode for the read, readid and write  commands.  This  is
              needed  on  certain broken FDC's which don't recognize end of transfer when running
              in nodma mode. In order to use these safely, set no-mt, and chose  the  id  of  the
              last sector to be read as sect-per-track.

       fdrawcmd opens the device node with the NDELAY flag. This means that the driver should not
       try to autodetect the disk type (it might not be formatted), and that it should not  reset
       the  FDC.  If  a  reset  was  needed,  the  command simply fails. If that happens, execute
       floppycontrol --resetnow 0 , and try again.

See Also

       Fdutils' texinfo doc