NEWS.TXT

Version History:

Version 0.01  Formats 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disks.

              Uses BIOS interrupts to allow it to work under FreeDOS.

              Has not been tested with other size floppy disks.

              The "This disk is not bootable" code was taken from the boot
              sector of a floppy disk formatted with the "mkfs -t msdos"
              command on a Linux PC.
 
              Most of the "infrastructure" is in place to enable this program
              to format disks without using DOS interrupts.

              Has sections of debugging code.

              Only formats the 1st partition on the 2nd hard disk.  (It is
              harder to debug a program when you are always formatting 
              your C: drive.  :-)  )
  
              Has sections of "rough" code that need to be modified.
              (i.e.  if statements that are always true)

Version 0.1   Replaced the sloppy code in the Convert_Logical_To_Physical
              function with equations.  Thanks go to Jan Verhoeven for 
              supplying the equations.

              Too many code changes to list here.

              Added a quick formatting routine, format drive: /q now will quick
              format a drive.

              Added more values to the boot sector that were missing in version
              0.01.  
            
              To unconditionally format a drive, format drive: /u must be 
              entered.  Unconditionally formatting a drive does not yet
              mark bad sectors or clusters in the FAT tables.

              The program will format 1.44 MB 3.5" floppy disks or the first 
              partition of the first hard drive.  The program considers any
              drive letter starting with c: to be the first partition on the
              first hard disk.  This will be corrected in a future release.

Version 0.2   Added /v switch to create a volume label on a newly formatted
              disk.

              Modified the command line parsing code to eliminate the need 
              for the string.h library.

              Changed the error-level codes to match those in my IBM DOS 5.0
              User's Guide and Reference.

              Corrected the code for processing the /q /u switches so that the
              program formats as per my DOS manual.

              Added more code to process the various switches that can be
              entered.

              Adjusted sectors per cluster conversion table.

              Added functionality to support up to 4 hard drives with a 
              maximum of 26 partitions per hard drive.  The program will now
              resolve the drive letter into a physical location to format on
              a hard disk.
 
Version 0.3   Added code to save the file system into a "mirror" at the end
              of the disk.  This "mirror" image is compatible with the 
              unformat command I have written.

              Moved the logical drive location adjustment code to a 
              centralized location under the Convert_Logical_To_Physical()
              function.  This should make the program easier to modify in the
              future because the now the programmer only has to refer to the
              sector number on the logical drive.  The programmer will not
              have to adjust for the beginning of a hard drive partition 
              when entering what sector to access.
             
Version 0.4   Now supports up to 8 physical drives.

              Added error trapping to avoid trying to save the file system of 
              an unformatted drive.

              Added the "/s" switch to make the disk bootable.  (Presently
              only works under MS-DOS.)

              Added code to force the volume label to all capital letters.

              Fixed a volume label creation bug where the volume label is not
              correctly added to the boot sector.

              Fixed the bug that prevented a mirror image being created on 
              sectors that had a numbers exceeding 1677216.

              Fixed a bug that caused the wrong number of sectors to be entered
              in the boot sector and processed elsewhere in the program.

              Now marks bad sectors in the FAT table for FAT16 partitions
              when unconditionally formatting a hard disk.
        
Version 0.5   Added code to specify exact number of sectors per FAT and 
              number of root directory entries for the following floppy
              drives:  1.44MB 3.5", 1.2MB 5.25", 720K 3.5", & 360K 5.25"
              (The only drive that is known to be successfully formatted is
              1.44MB 3.5".)
 
              Added information to the help screen.             

              The help screen can be displayed by either typing "FORMAT" or
              "FORMAT /?"

              Adjusted equation for computing the total logical partition 
              size which fixed a bug causing an unconditional format to 
              format into the next partition.

              Added code to optimize the formatting process and unconditionally 
              format a track at a time.

              Now marks bad sectors in the FAT table for FAT12 partitions.

              Increase speed of unconditionally formatting a hard disk by
              writing a track at a time instead of a sector at a time.

              Fixed a bug that prevented accurate boot sectors from being written in 
              FAT12 partitions on hard disks.

              Changed the location of the bad sector map initialization code to 
              prevent errors reading the disk when formatting with both /u and /q.

              Added code to terminate formatting if a bad sector is encountered in
              boot sector, FAT tables, or root directory.
 
              Discovered that the program would write to bad sectors and not save
              their locations in the bad sector map.  Added code to verify that the
              sectors are good to rectify this problem.  If the sectors fail 
              verification then it is marked in the bad sector map to be later
              recorded in the FAT tables.

              Fixed a bug that where the program did not always pass a null 
              terminated string to the "sys" command when writing system files
              while formatting a disk.

Version 0.6   PLANNED CHANGES

              Ensure that the program successfully formats all types of floppy 
              disks.

              Fix any encountered bugs.
              
              
