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MS-DOS Floppy drive head exerciser programs

VERAULT

VERAULT

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Does anyone know a DOS utility for floppy drives that would exercise the heads back and forth (over and over automatically) preferably verifying the sectors or randomly reading. I am trying to break in some long dormant drives and something like this would be a big help.

Dave Dunfields' Image Disk has utilities but they are manual and dont do what I am asking as far as I know.
 
Do you have a Greaseweasel? You can write a batch file to exercise the heads with it from the command line...

Also, keep in mind whether you will exercise with a disk present or just a disk sleeve as when the disk is out, the heads will move, but the pressure on the upper head retraction lever will affect the outcome if it's something like a 3.5" worm drive that hasn't been cleaned in a long time .
 
You could Download the TRS-80 Emulator by David Keil, then Run the Floppy Doctor Software.

XTRS and TRS-80 (Keil's Emulator) write a disk image to a real physical floppy.

I prefer the Emulator by David Keil, but I use both, running from Linux, as Linux still supports
Floppy Drives of various formats. (Debian 11 - 64 Bit is what I'm using now.)

Keil's Emulator

Keil's Emulator will run under DOS, DosBox on Windows, or Linux, and likely MAC.
I use it under DOS and also DOSBox on Linux.


It will write floppy images to a real floppy (Also XTRS will do the same.)


XTRS by Tim Mann.




Larry
 

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cj7hawk said:
Do you have a Greaseweasel? You can write a batch file to exercise the heads with it from the command line...

Also, keep in mind whether you will exercise with a disk present or just a disk sleeve as when the disk is out, the heads will move, but the pressure on the upper head retraction lever will affect the outcome if it's something like a 3.5" worm drive that hasn't been cleaned in a long time .
Click to expand...
I do and a kryoflux. These are all double density 5.25" drives.
 
VERAULT said:
Does anyone know a DOS utility for floppy drives that would exercise the heads back and forth (over and over automatically) preferably verifying the sectors or randomly reading. I am trying to break in some long dormant drives and something like this would be a big help.
Click to expand...
CheckIt 3 might be of use. It can do its floppy test 999 times:

[Tests]
[Select batch]
Change the setup so that: Only the floppy disks are tested, and the floppy test includes a write test, and passes=999.
 
I guess I never bothered to checkout the batch option on Checkit3 before. I have it running right now set to 999. That should do the trick I think. Thanks for everyones input.
 
I really wish this batch had a total # to go or completed while the test runs so you can have an aproximation of how long its been running.

So far it failed the first test after about 5 to 10 minutes, then just kept faulting out rerunning the test about every second or so.

This is the second or third iteration and its been running a couple of hours.
 
Ok I ran the batch job for the floppy test for most of today. On the last iteration I canceled it and looked at the log files. I canceled it mid test #52. There were various read and write errors up until test #30 and then all the way until I canceled it no errors.So it seems to be working.


I dont know about only 52 tests in 5 hours... But maybe thats correct.
 
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