CFormat v2.1 04/13/88
by Chris Patterson

CFormat is a diskette formatting program that much improved over the
standard DOS format command. CFormat contains many additional features such
as continuous formatting, formatting without verification, and quick re-
formatting of previously formatted diskettes. The program only works with
360K floppies. A version for 1.2M diskettes may come out, but no plans are
currently set due to the fact that I do not own an AT class machine.

CFormat is invoked in two ways. You can simply call CFormat from the
DOS prompt without any command line parameters or you can specify parameters
upon startup. The following parameters are valid.

A - includes drive A in the formatting process.

B - includes drive B in the formatting process.

C - selects continuous formatting until a key is pressed.

M - selects black and white so that colours are not displayed.

Q - selects QuickReFormat mode which skips the actual laying out of the
tracks onto a previously formatted diskette.

S - selects automatic processing of the command line parameters. If
specified, the program will not wait for user input and will
automatically carry out the selected options.

V - selects Verification on formatted disks. This is optional on both
the normal format and the QuickReFormat modes. It is suggested that
Verification be used when using the QuickReFormat mode.

Those are all of the current options that are available with version 2.1 and
previous versions should be ignored.

Rather than waste time explaining what every command does to the letter,
I will merely give several examples of parameters and explain what will
happen when that command is sent.

C>cformat av will tell cformat to select drive A with verification and
the user is required to select "Start Format" from the
operations menu.

C>cformat avs does the same as above but the program will start
formatting automatically without any user intervention.
Great for batch files that are used to format diskettes
within software packages.

C>cformat abv tells CFormat to select drives A and B with verification
and the user is required to select "Start Format" from the
operations menu. Upon starting the format procedure, the
program will format drive A and then format drive B and
then return to the operations menu.

C>cformat abvs same as above but without any user intervention.

C>cformat cv tells CFormat to continuously format drives A and B until
a key is pressed. The user starts by selecting "Start
Format" (or uses the "S" parameter from the command line)
and the program will format drive A and then drive B and
then drive A again and so forth until a key is pressed by
the user.

C>cformat aqvs tells CFormat to QuickReFormat drive A with verification
and start automatically without waiting for a keypress.
The disk in drive A must have been formatted once already
as a 360K floppy or there will be some serious problems.

C>cformat aqs tells CFormat to QuickReFormat drive A and start
automatically without a user selection. This takes about
5 seconds to do and is quite fast. It only works with
previously formatted 360K floppies and does not verify the
diskette so be careful!

You are starting to get an idea of how CFormat works. You are also probably
wondering about the command line parameter format. Most programs require
that you enter a "/V" or an "A:" parameter. Well, let me put it this way.
Take note of the following three examples that do exactly the same thing.
The carrots indicate the characters that CFormat will pay attention to.

C>cformat a: b: /v -s
^ ^ ^ ^
C>cformat abvs
^^^^
C>cformat alice brown victor tinsel
^ ^ ^ ^
No matter where the letters are, CFormat will only find the ones that it is
looking for. So command line format is not very important. For you
programmers, all I do is take the command line and go through it looking for
those characters and ignoring those that do not matter. Great way to do
things.

I am requesting a donation of $10 be mailed to the below listed address.
If you have previously registered your copy, and many of you out there have,
you are not required to register twice. (Unless you really like the new
version)

Future Plans: CFormat is at the best level for me right now. I only
use an XT class compatible with two floppies and a 60 meg drive. I have
found CFormat to reliably format 360K floppies on 1.2M drives that can be
read on standard 360K drives. I am planning on upgrading to an AT in the
future and when I do, you can be guaranteed a 1.2M version of CFormat. I
will keep the original 360K version as it is for XT users who do not need
1.2M formatting, but the AT version will include both 360K and 1.2M sizes.
Then later in life when I obtain a 720k 3.5 drive or a 1.44M 3.5 drive, I
will concentrate some effort on making CFormat work for those drives too!

Please send all donations to:

Chris Patterson
P.O. Box 34
Boystown, NE 68010

BBS: 402/333-4297