[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Wolfi
], who wrote in article <37uvkbF5gkp9bU1@individual.net>:
> Do I understand this correctly so far, that there is now way from OS/2 to format
> an USB Flash drive with Fat32?

I formatted from OS/2. Had no time to post the algorithm (not 1-step)...

Hope this helps,
Ilya

Wolfi wrote:
> Do I understand this correctly so far, that there is now way from OS/2
> to format an USB Flash drive with Fat32?
> It requires either an additionally installed version of Window$98+ or
> Linux?
>
> Are there any USB drivers for DOS (integrated VIA PCI USB UHCI host
> controller)?
> Then it could also work with PQMagic.

Strictly speaking, it is not possible to format a drive as FAT32 in OS/2 or eCS.

However there is a workaround that I have used many times on hard drive partitions:

You need: DFSee (available from Jan van Wyck) and F32blank (available from Hobbes).

The process:

1. Use DFSee to:

a) zero the partition to be formatted and set its type to 0b or 0c as
appropriate and hide the partition form os/2.

b) get information about the geometry of the drive Number of heads and
number of sectors per track

c) get information about the partition/volume to be formatted starting
sector number and number of sectors (in hex).

2. Use F32blank.cmd to create an image file of an empty fat32 partition on a
drive having the given geometry and loacted at the given range of sectors. The
image file will only include the fat tables and other control information, not
the entire drive.

3. Use DFSee to copy the image file to the beginning of the partition to be
formatted. THen give the partition a drive letter

4. Exit from DFSee and reboot.

5. Run chkdsk /f on the partition.

(If you do all of this while booted from a bootable cd it is not necessary to
hide/unhide the partition from OS/2 and reboot.

I can't say whether or not this will work for a flash card but it very well may.
You can but try.

Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
> wolfi wrote in article <37uvkbF5gkp9bU1@individual.net>:
>
>>Do I understand this correctly so far, that there is now way from OS/2 to format
>> an USB Flash drive with Fat32?
>
>
> I formatted from OS/2. Had no time to post the algorithm (not 1-step)...
>

Hi Ilya,

I hope, that you soon may find a little time, to outline the procedure required.

Already now I'm quite curious to learn, how you managed to do, what according to
the readmes I've found so far in the FAT32 package and about format itself,
should be impossible ;-)

Wolfi

PS: you're making it really hard to reply to your email. I couldn't figure out a
way to succeed :-\

In message <37uvkbF5gkp9bU1@individual.net> - Wolfi Mon,
21 Feb 2005 14:45:59 -0600 writes:
:>
:>Do I understand this correctly so far, that there is now way from OS/2 to format
:> an USB Flash drive with Fat32?
:>It requires either an additionally installed version of Window$98+ or Linux?


Wolfi,

I assume you have checked

http://fat32.netlabs.org/?show=download


Regards,

-=terry (Denver)=-
chustyXXX@attglobal.net
AIM: terryXela

Teruel de Campo wrote:

> In message <37uvkbF5gkp9bU1@individual.net> - Wolfi Mon,
> 21 Feb 2005 14:45:59 -0600 writes:
> :>
> :>Do I understand this correctly so far, that there is now way from OS/2 to format
> :> an USB Flash drive with Fat32?
> :>It requires either an additionally installed version of Window$98+ or Linux?
>
>
> Wolfi,
>
> I assume you have checked
>
> http://fat32.netlabs.org/?show=download
>

FAT32.TXT, Version 0.99:

==============================================
MAKING ECS AND OS/2 RECOGNIZE FAT32 PARTITIONS:
==============================================
[...]
Note: Win95 OSR2 (commonly known as Windows95b) or newer is needed to format
the media as FAT32.

==============================
CURRENT STATUS AND FEATURES:
==============================
LIMITATIONS:
------------
[...]
The FORMAT, RECOVER and SYSINSTX commands are not supported.


Wolfi

James J. Weinkam wrote:
> Wolfi wrote:
>
>> Do I understand this correctly so far, that there is now way from OS/2
>> to format an USB Flash drive with Fat32?
>> It requires either an additionally installed version of Window$98+ or
>> Linux?
>>
>> Are there any USB drivers for DOS (integrated VIA PCI USB UHCI host
>> controller)?
>> Then it could also work with PQMagic.
>
>
> Strictly speaking, it is not possible to format a drive as FAT32 in OS/2
> or eCS.
>
> However there is a workaround that I have used many times on hard drive
> partitions:
>
> You need: DFSee (available from Jan van Wyck) and F32blank (available
> from Hobbes).
>
> The process:
>
> 1. Use DFSee to:
>
> a) zero the partition to be formatted and set its type to 0b or 0c as
> appropriate and hide the partition form os/2.
>
> b) get information about the geometry of the drive Number of heads
> and number of sectors per track
>
> c) get information about the partition/volume to be formatted
> starting sector number and number of sectors (in hex).
>
> 2. Use F32blank.cmd to create an image file of an empty fat32 partition
> on a drive having the given geometry and loacted at the given range of
> sectors. The image file will only include the fat tables and other
> control information, not the entire drive.
>
> 3. Use DFSee to copy the image file to the beginning of the partition
> to be formatted. THen give the partition a drive letter
>
> 4. Exit from DFSee and reboot.
>
> 5. Run chkdsk /f on the partition.
>
> (If you do all of this while booted from a bootable cd it is not
> necessary to hide/unhide the partition from OS/2 and reboot.
>
> I can't say whether or not this will work for a flash card but it very
> well may. You can but try.


This is taken from the soon to be released FAT32 ver 0.99.2 driver
FAT32.INF file.
Formatting FAT32 Volumes

Formatting FAT32 can be done numerous ways. Presently, the only way to
format a volume FAT32 under either eComStation or OS/2 is to use DFSee
and F32blank together. The procedure is as follows:

1.Find out the volume relevant data: Heads, Sectors, Starting point
and Size using DFSee
2.Feed F32Blank with that data to generate a file with blank FATs
suitable for the volume
3.Detach the volume (with LVM it's called 'hide' or similar)
4.Use DFSee to overwrite the volume with the file contents, using "wrim".
5.Attach again the volume.
6.If after this you can't read/write properly the volume or it appears
as not empty, then you MUST reboot and check it again.
7.If you don't like DFSee go and find something else capable of doing
the job.

If this is too complicated for some people, the USB media can be
formatted using one of the Window's versions. Each Windows version has
it own built in limitations.

Win95R2 <= 16 GB
Windows 98 second addition - Volumes < 128 GB and > 512 MB
Windows ME - 512 MB to 2 TB.
Windows XP <= 32 GB.

Other formatting alternatives

FreeDOS <= 16 GB
Partition Commander versions 8 and 9 (Limitations unknown)

David Graser wrote:
> James J. Weinkam wrote:
>
>> Wolfi wrote:
>>
>>> Do I understand this correctly so far, that there is now way from
>>> OS/2 to format an USB Flash drive with Fat32?
>>> It requires either an additionally installed version of Window$98+ or
>>> Linux?
>>>
>>> Are there any USB drivers for DOS (integrated VIA PCI USB UHCI host
>>> controller)?
>>> Then it could also work with PQMagic.
>>
>>
>>
>> Strictly speaking, it is not possible to format a drive as FAT32 in
>> OS/2 or eCS.
>>
>> However there is a workaround that I have used many times on hard
>> drive partitions:
>>
>> You need: DFSee (available from Jan van Wyck) and F32blank (available
>> from Hobbes).
>>
>> The process:
>>
>> 1. Use DFSee to:
>>
>> a) zero the partition to be formatted and set its type to 0b or 0c
>> as appropriate and hide the partition form os/2.
>>
>> b) get information about the geometry of the drive Number of heads
>> and number of sectors per track
>>
>> c) get information about the partition/volume to be formatted
>> starting sector number and number of sectors (in hex).
>>
>> 2. Use F32blank.cmd to create an image file of an empty fat32
>> partition on a drive having the given geometry and loacted at the
>> given range of sectors. The image file will only include the fat
>> tables and other control information, not the entire drive.
>>
>> 3. Use DFSee to copy the image file to the beginning of the partition
>> to be formatted. THen give the partition a drive letter
>>
>> 4. Exit from DFSee and reboot.
>>
>> 5. Run chkdsk /f on the partition.
>>
>> (If you do all of this while booted from a bootable cd it is not
>> necessary to hide/unhide the partition from OS/2 and reboot.
>>
>> I can't say whether or not this will work for a flash card but it very
>> well may. You can but try.
>
>
>
> This is taken from the soon to be released FAT32 ver 0.99.2 driver
> FAT32.INF file.
> Formatting FAT32 Volumes
>
> Formatting FAT32 can be done numerous ways. Presently, the only way to
> format a volume FAT32 under either eComStation or OS/2 is to use DFSee
> and F32blank together. The procedure is as follows:
>
> 1.Find out the volume relevant data: Heads, Sectors, Starting point and
> Size using DFSee
> 2.Feed F32Blank with that data to generate a file with blank FATs
> suitable for the volume
> 3.Detach the volume (with LVM it's called 'hide' or similar)
> 4.Use DFSee to overwrite the volume with the file contents, using "wrim".
> 5.Attach again the volume.
> 6.If after this you can't read/write properly the volume or it appears
> as not empty, then you MUST reboot and check it again.
> 7.If you don't like DFSee go and find something else capable of doing
> the job.
>
> If this is too complicated for some people, the USB media can be
> formatted using one of the Window's versions. Each Windows version has
> it own built in limitations.
>
> Win95R2 <= 16 GB
> Windows 98 second addition - Volumes < 128 GB and > 512 MB
> Windows ME - 512 MB to 2 TB.
> Windows XP <= 32 GB.
>
> Other formatting alternatives
>
> FreeDOS <= 16 GB
> Partition Commander versions 8 and 9 (Limitations unknown)
>
It's good to hear that the "formatting" instructions will be distributed with
the drivers. This will save people a lot of looking and asking around.

I urge you to add the bit about zeroing out the partition. Admittedly it is not
always necessary, but I have encountered at least two instances where failing to
do so caused a bunch of strange files to show up, so I have made it a practice.
Deleting the files and running chkdsk /f again fixed the problem so it isn't
too serious.

Also in my experience, it does not appear to be necessary to hide the volume to
be "formatted" from OS/2 if the whole operation is done while booted from a
bootable CD. You may want to check this out yourself and add something about
that if you think it is safe for general use.

I suggested to Jan van Wyck that he incorporate the ability to format fat32
drives into DFSee and he indicated that he is considering it as a possible
future extension. So there is some hope that things will get even easier.

What are the chances of eventually including a proper format command with the
driver?

James J. Weinkam wrote:
> David Graser wrote:
>
>> James J. Weinkam wrote:
>>
>>> Wolfi wrote:
>>>
>>>> Do I understand this correctly so far, that there is now way from
>>>> OS/2 to format an USB Flash drive with Fat32?
>>>> It requires either an additionally installed version of Window$98+
>>>> or Linux?
>>>>
>>>> Are there any USB drivers for DOS (integrated VIA PCI USB UHCI host
>>>> controller)?
>>>> Then it could also work with PQMagic.
>>>

>> This is taken from the soon to be released FAT32 ver 0.99.2 driver
>> FAT32.INF file.


Thank you, David.
that really is good news :-)


>> Formatting FAT32 Volumes
>>
>> Formatting FAT32 can be done numerous ways. Presently, the only way
>> to format a volume FAT32 under either eComStation or OS/2 is to use
>> DFSee and F32blank together. The procedure is as follows:
>>
>> 1.Find out the volume relevant data: Heads, Sectors, Starting point
>> and Size using DFSee
>> 2.Feed F32Blank with that data to generate a file with blank FATs
>> suitable for the volume
>> 3.Detach the volume (with LVM it's called 'hide' or similar)
>> 4.Use DFSee to overwrite the volume with the file contents, using
>> "wrim".
>> 5.Attach again the volume.
>> 6.If after this you can't read/write properly the volume or it
>> appears as not empty, then you MUST reboot and check it again.


Do 3.)... 6.) work the same for USB connected drives (HDD or flash drives)?
If the drive is ejected/detached (or whatever it is called in the English
version), then it shouldn't be accessable at all anymore.


>> 7.If you don't like DFSee go and find something else capable of doing
>> the job.
>>
>> If this is too complicated for some people, the USB media can be
>> formatted using one of the Window's versions. Each Windows version has
>> it own built in limitations.
>>
>> Win95R2 <= 16 GB
>> Windows 98 second addition - Volumes < 128 GB and > 512 MB
>> Windows ME - 512 MB to 2 TB.
>> Windows XP <= 32 GB.
>>
>> Other formatting alternatives
>>
>> FreeDOS <= 16 GB


Are there any USB drivers for FreeDos or any other flavour of DOS?


>> Partition Commander versions 8 and 9 (Limitations unknown)
>>
> It's good to hear that the "formatting" instructions will be distributed
> with the drivers. This will save people a lot of looking and asking
> around.

Indeed.

> I suggested to Jan van Wyck that he incorporate the ability to format
> fat32 drives into DFSee and he indicated that he is considering it as a
> possible future extension. So there is some hope that things will get
> even easier.
>
> What are the chances of eventually including a proper format command
> with the driver?

Either one of these 2 options wold of course be the most favourable
solution ;-)

Wolfi

Wolfi wrote:
> James J. Weinkam wrote:
>
>> David Graser wrote:
>>
>>> James J. Weinkam wrote:
>>>
>>>> Wolfi wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Do I understand this correctly so far, that there is now way from
>>>>> OS/2 to format an USB Flash drive with Fat32?
>>>>> It requires either an additionally installed version of Window$98+
>>>>> or Linux?
>>>>>
>>>>> Are there any USB drivers for DOS (integrated VIA PCI USB UHCI host
>>>>> controller)?
>>>>> Then it could also work with PQMagic.
>>>>


Check out

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

David

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Wolfi
], who wrote in article <37vv41F5gt1heU1@individual.net>:
> I hope, that you soon may find a little time, to outline the procedure required.
>
> Already now I'm quite curious to learn, how you managed to do, what according to
> the readmes I've found so far in the FAT32 package and about format itself,
> should be impossible ;-)

Quick-formatting a drive is just writing a few "correct" 512-byte long
sectors; most of them most probably filled by 0s. Any OS can do it,
if you can deduce the contents of these sectors.

> PS: you're making it really hard to reply to your email. I couldn't figure out a
> way to succeed :-\

That's not me. WWW to ilyaz.org for details.

================================================== =====

Prerequisites for the whole process: dd, cat (GNU file utilities),
perl, f32blank. Knowledge of drive number and drive letter is
required! Wrong step can break your data! In what follows the drive
is assumed to be 3, and the drive letter o:. The process assumes that
drive size is below 2G (so one can format it for FAT), and there is
only one partition on the drive (both assumptions can be easily
removed).

ALL THE STEPS WILL DESTROY INFORMATION ON THE DRIVE-IN-QUESTION. BE
EXTRA CAREFUL!

Here is a beginning of the process (needed for USB drives, since most
of them come with broken contents; not needed for completely blank
media, or correctly partitioned media).

Wiping and recreating MBR on removable o:

perl -we "print qq(\0) x 512" > zero512
dd bs=512 of=o: if=zero512
eject o:

If things has gone too bad on the stick (too contradictory an info),
one may need to use

dd bs=512 of=$3: if=zero512

here 3 is the number of the drive as shown by fdisk.

Now extract and reinsert the removable, then run fdisk and create a
primary partition (e.g., run FDISK; press TAB; choose the disk number
(probably the last one; press TAB again; create a primary).

eject o:
Extract and reinsert the removable.

Now one can do
format o: /fs:fat

This creates a FAT partition; the only use is that the script below
can read the head/cylinders count from the BPB; so probably any other
filesystem type will work as well...

================================================== =====

Now assume that the stick has a correct partition table, and has only
one partition (FAT checked, but I expect any other should work too).

Do

dd bs=512 of=fat16.img if=o: count=257

(bs=257 should be enough to get to the first bootrecord; the actual
FAT tables can take additional 65K*4/512=512 blocks; yet more for the
root directory; but we do not need them for what follows).

perl -S fat12fs.pl -emit_fat32=fat32.img perl -S fat12fs.pl -emit_fat32=fat32.img -emit_prefat32=pre-fat32.img cat pre-fat32.img FAT32.IMG >FAT32.IMG-all

(fetch from ilyaz.org/software/os2). This will run f32blank with
correct parameters, will create the image file fat32.img, and
corrected partition table (and empty filler) in file per-fat32.img.

Up to this step, no actual write to the disk-to-be-formatted is
performed. The following command will actually WRITE the information
to disk:

dd bs=512 if=fat32.img-all of=o:
chkdsk o: /f
eject o:

Note that the partition type in the partition table is changed to be
FAT32. This is not necessarily A GOOD THING. For some applications
(e.g., with non-LVM systems) it is better to leave this field alone (I
checked that this inconsistency does not matter with Win XP [no-SP and
SP2] and OS X). For this, use the corresponding chunk from fat16.img
instead of pre-fat32.img.

Hope this helps,
Ilya

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 20:04:56 UTC, Wolfi wrote:


> Are there any USB drivers for FreeDos or any other flavour of DOS?

Officially available, free to use, NO ...

But, there are several drivers floating arround on the WEB that are
intended for use as OEM drivers for DOS, to install stuff and to use
with backup/restore programs. They are usually licensed to
hardware or software companies distributing them.

If you google for 'usbaspi.sys', 'di1000dd.sys' and 'ramfd.sys' you
should be able to find a set that seems to work fairly well :-)

If you can't find them, try:

www DOT dfsee DOT com SLASH download SLASH usbfrdos DOT zip



> > I suggested to Jan van Wyck that he incorporate the ability to format
> > fat32 drives into DFSee and he indicated that he is considering it as a
> > possible future extension. So there is some hope that things will get
> > even easier.

Planned for the next couple of months, in one
of the upcoming 7.xx minor releases ...


Regards, JvW

--
Jan van Wijk; Author of DFSee: http://www.dfsee.com

Jan van Wijk wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 20:04:56 UTC, Wolfi wrote:
>
>
>
>>Are there any USB drivers for FreeDos or any other flavour of DOS?
>
>
> Officially available, free to use, NO ...
>
> But, there are several drivers floating arround on the WEB that are
> intended for use as OEM drivers for DOS, to install stuff and to use
> with backup/restore programs. They are usually licensed to
> hardware or software companies distributing them.
>
> If you google for 'usbaspi.sys', 'di1000dd.sys' and 'ramfd.sys' you
> should be able to find a set that seems to work fairly well :-)
>
> If you can't find them, try:
>
> www DOT dfsee DOT com SLASH download SLASH usbfrdos DOT zip
>
>
>
>
>> > I suggested to Jan van Wyck that he incorporate the ability to format
>>
>>>fat32 drives into DFSee and he indicated that he is considering it as a
>>>possible future extension. So there is some hope that things will get
>>>even easier.
>
>
> Planned for the next couple of months, in one
> of the upcoming 7.xx minor releases ...

Jan, thank you very much for these very helpful informations :-D

Wolfi

Wolfi wrote:
>
> Are there any USB drivers for DOS (integrated VIA PCI USB UHCI host
> controller)?
> Then it could also work with PQMagic.

Well, yesterday I had a surprising occasion to have access to a Win98se laptop,
from which of course, I immediately tried to format my USB drive.

But I couldn't get the Win format to be forced to format the 256MB drive as
Fat32. Of course the Fat->Fat32 conversion program also considered the drive to
be too small.
Is there a way at all to do so, w/o coming back to DFSee?

So far, the only way to get the VFAT longname stuff working from OS/2 is on
FAT32 partitions, isn't it? Is it also true for Linux?

My Win98 days are more than 6 years back now and back then I hardly used it
anyway in favour of OS/2. It's amazing how much stuff can be forgotten in such a
short time :-\.

Luckily on that laptop, there was also PQMagic V4.something installed. So of
course I also tried this. But at least that version is only able to detect the
hard drive, but not the USB flash drive. So this way also seems to be a dead end.
Does V5 or any of the later ones, which also still can handle HPFS, any better
in this respect?

Wolfi