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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              A pre-made HTML can be found at: `http://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/fdutils'

       *      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