Article-I.D.: brl-adm.4353
Posted: Tue Feb 10 09:01:22 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Feb-87 07:34:53 EST
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 19

The C128 CP/M utility FORMAT.COM distributed with early 128s only did three
formats - all were GCR, all formated both sides of the disk (on a 1571), and
two of them marked the disk as single sided in track 18, sector 0.  The GCR
portion of the C1571 DOS just doesn't have an option to only format one side.
The only way to get a true "flippy" CP/M diskette formatted is to force the
drive into 1541 (aka "oh-so-slow") mode (send U0>M0 to the command channel),
then boot up (from a single sided system disk) and ask FORMAT to do one of the
single sided formats.  The CP/M diskettes distributed by Commodore are "flippy"
and not double sided because some masochist may be trying to run CP/M with only
a 1541 drive.

The newer FORMAT.COM (which I assume is being distributed with 128s now, and
on the new CP/M release,  8 Dec 85) will do the above 3, plus format a number of
MFM formats.  I got my copy off of either GENIE or COMPUSERVE, I can't remem-
ber which, a long time ago.  I will upload it to SIMTEL20 (where the rest of
the 6/8 Dec 85 updated CP/M software resides) with Commodore's permission.

Frank Prindle
Prindle@NADC.arpa