1.\" 2.\" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.\" "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42): 4.\" <phk@FreeBSD.org> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you 5.\" can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think 6.\" this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Poul-Henning Kamp 7.\" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.\" 9.\" 10.Dd November 16, 2025 11.Dt FDWRITE 1 12.Os 13.Sh NAME 14.Nm fdwrite 15.Nd format and write floppy disks 16.Sh SYNOPSIS 17.Nm 18.Op Fl v 19.Op Fl y 20.Op Fl f Ar inputfile 21.Op Fl d Ar device 22.Sh DEPRECATION NOTICE 23.Nm 24is deprecated and may not be present in 25.Fx 16.0 26and later. 27.Sh DESCRIPTION 28The 29.Nm 30utility formats and writes one and more floppy disks. 31Any floppy disk device capable of formatting can be used. 32.Pp 33The 34.Nm 35utility will ask the user 36(on 37.Pa /dev/tty ) 38to insert a new floppy and press return. 39The device will then be opened, and queried for its parameters, 40then each track will be formatted, written with data from the 41.Ar inputfile , 42read back and compared. 43When the floppy disk is filled, the process is repeated, with the next disk. 44This continues until the program is interrupted or EOF is encountered on the 45.Ar inputfile . 46.Pp 47The options are as follows: 48.Bl -tag -width 10n -offset indent 49.It Fl v 50Toggle verbosity on stdout. 51Default is ``on''. 52After 53.Ar device 54is opened first time the format will be printed. 55During operation progress will be reported with the number of tracks 56remaining on the current floppy disk, and the letters I, Z, F, W, 57R and C, which indicates completion of Input, Zero-fill, Format 58Write, Read and Compare of current track respectively. 59.It Fl y 60Do not ask for presence of a floppy disk in the drive. 61This non-interactive flag 62is useful for shell scripts. 63.It Fl f Ar inputfile 64Input file to read. 65If none is given, stdin is assumed. 66.It Fl d Ar device 67The name of the floppy device to write to. 68Default is 69.Pa /dev/fd0 . 70.El 71.Pp 72The 73.Nm 74utility actually closes the 75.Ar device 76while it waits for the user to press return, 77it is thus quite possible to use the drive for other purposes at this 78time and later resume writing with the next floppy. 79.Pp 80The parameters returned from 81.Ar device 82are used for formatting. 83If custom formatting is needed, please use 84.Xr fdformat 8 85instead. 86.Sh EXAMPLES 87The 88.Nm 89utility 90was planned as a tool to make life easier when writing a set of floppies, 91one such use could be to write a tar-archive: 92.Pp 93.Dl tar cf - . | gzip -9 | fdwrite -d /dev/fd0.1720 -v 94.Pp 95The main difference from using 96.Xr tar 1 Ns 's 97multivolume facility is of course the formatting of the floppies, which 98here is done on the fly, 99thus reducing the amount of work for the floppy-jockey. 100.Sh SEE ALSO 101.Xr fdformat 8 102.Sh HISTORY 103The 104.Nm 105utility was written while waiting for ``make world'' to complete. 106Some of the code was taken from 107.Xr fdformat 8 . 108.Sh AUTHORS 109The program has been contributed by 110.An Poul-Henning Kamp Aq Mt phk@FreeBSD.org . 111.Sh BUGS 112Diagnostics are less than complete at present. 113.Pp 114If a floppy is sick, and the 115.Ar inputfile 116is seekable, it should ask the user to frisbee the disk, insert 117another, and rewind to the right spot and continue. 118.Pp 119This concept could be extended to cover non-seekable input also 120by employing a temporary file. 121.Pp 122An option (defaulting to zero) should allow the user to ask for 123retries in case of failure. 124.Pp 125At present a suitable tool for reading back a multivolume set 126of floppies is missing. 127Programs like 128.Xr tar 1 129for instance, will do the job, if the data has not been compressed. 130One can always trust 131.Xr dd 1 132to help out in this situation of course. 133