2M is a
DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...
program by the Spanish programmer Ciriaco García de Celis. It enables higher than normal capacity
formatting of
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
s. It saw active development from 1993 to 1995. The last version, v3.0, was released on 6 March 1995. It was written in C and assembler and compiled using
Borland C++
Borland C++ is a C and C++ IDE (integrated development environment) for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was the successor to Turbo C++ and included a better debugger, the Turbo Debugger, which was written in protected mode DOS.
Libraries
O ...
3.1.
The program consisted of two major components: 2M and 2MGUI (from "2M Guinness"). Of these, 2M was the main program enabling the formatting, reading and writing of high density 3.5" disks formatted to a capacity of either 1804
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
or 1886 KB, and 2MGUI was a proof-of-concept program that demonstrated the ability to format any normal high density 3.5" disk to a capacity of over two million bytes (1972
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
) on any disk drive. Both programs implemented disk I/O speedups in the form of "Sector Sliding" and "DiskBoost", which work on the principle of ordering the physical sectors on the disk to facilitate pauseless reading over track changes. 2MGUI utilized
bit banging
In computer engineering and electrical engineering, bit banging is a "term of art" for any method of data transmission that employs software as a substitute for dedicated hardware to generate transmitted signals or process received signals. Soft ...
and tricked the
floppy controller
A floppy-disk controller (FDC) has evolved from a discrete set of components on one or more circuit boards to a special-purpose integrated circuit (IC or "chip") or a component thereof. An FDC directs and controls reading from and writing to ...
into writing a full track of data as a single sector before resetting the floppy controller in order to avoid overwriting the next track, enabling the absolute maximum capacity possible at the physical level. A similar technique was also used by Vincent Joguin's Disk2FDI for Amiga floppies.
{, class="wikitable" style="text-align:right"
! align=center , Formatting program
! align=center , 3.5",
DD
! align=center , 3.5",
HD
! align=center , 3.5",
ED
, -
, FORMAT (80
track
Track or Tracks may refer to:
Routes or imprints
* Ancient trackway, any track or trail whose origin is lost in antiquity
* Animal track, imprints left on surfaces that an animal walks across
* Desire path, a line worn by people taking the shorte ...
s)
, 737,280 bytes (720
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, 1,474,560 bytes (1440
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, 2,949,120 bytes (2880
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, -
, FDFORMAT 1.8 (82 tracks)
, 839,680 bytes (820
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, 1,763,328 bytes (1722
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, ''not supported''
, -
, 2MF 3.0 /F (82 tracks)
, 1,007,616 bytes (984
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, 1,847,296 bytes (1804
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, 3,694,592 bytes (3608
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, -
, 2MF 3.0 /M (82 tracks)
, 1,091,584 bytes (1066
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, 1,931,264 bytes (1886
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, 3,862,528 bytes (3772
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, -
, 2MGUI 1.0 (82 tracks)
, 1,204,224 bytes (1176
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, 2,019,328 bytes (1972
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, 4,038,656 bytes (3944
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, -
, blank disk (82 tracks)
, ~1,230,000 bytes (1201
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, ~2,050,000 bytes (2002
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
, ~4,100,000 bytes (4004
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
)
See also
*
DMF, a high-density diskette format used by Microsoft
*
fdformat
Fdformat is the name of two unrelated programs:
* A command-line tool for Linux that " low-level formats" a floppy disk.
* A DOS tool written in Pascal by Christoph H. Hochstätter that allows users to format floppy disks to a higher than usu ...
, a similar program that offers less capacity
*
XDF, a high-density diskette format used by IBM
References
* All information is based on that given in 2M-INFO.EXE supplied with 2M v3.0
External links
A direct download link to 2m30.zipA direct download link to 2mgui19.zip
1993 software
DOS software