Name

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

Note

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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