floppymeter(1)						      General Commands Manual						    floppymeter(1)

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  rep-
       resentation  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:

		     ./configure; make html

	      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 contin-
	      uously 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-5.5							      03Mar05							    floppymeter(1)