Fdrawcmd.sys
Fdrawcmd.sys is a floppy filter driver for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7.
The driver exposes command-level access to the µPD765a floppy disk controller, making it possible to read/write many non-standard and copy-protected disk formats from your own applications.
The driver is free for use by both commercial and non-commercial applications. Please contact me for further details.
Traditionally DOS-only features include:
- Custom track formatting
- Mixed-sector sizes
- Zero-based sector numbers
- Non-standard ID header values
- Track layout scanning ordered from index hole
Advanced features unique to this driver:
- Writing CRC errors with specific sector contents
- Writing sectors with missing data fields
- Writing truncated sectors (e.g. 8K sectors on double-density tracks)
- Weak or partially weak sectors
- Duplicate sector numbers on the same track
- Mixed-mode track formatting
- Multi-pass track formatting for tighter formats
- 2-drive raw track reading of Amiga disks (Disk2FDI method)
Other benefits:
- Simple 3-click install/upgrade process, or silent no-click install
- No need to replace existing Windows floppy driver
- No need to disable virus-scanners for floppy access
- PC running Windows 2000 or later (x86 or x64)
- One or two non-USB floppy drives connected to a motherboard floppy port
USB floppy drives do not work as they contain a separate floppy controller chip with no way for the driver to access it. Laptops and some modern desktop devices lack a floppy port, and cannot be used with the driver.
Support for two floppy drives also requires a compatible floppy controller chip. Some mothboards use a cheaper chip that only supports a single drive. If your BIOS settings only mention drive A, it's unlikely that you'll be able to use two drives (as needed for Amiga disk reading).
Version 1.0.1.10, last updated 21st December 2008 [changelog]
FdInstall.exe (107K)
Applications known to use the driver:
- 1581Disk - Commodore 1581 disk utility
- adfread - Amiga disk reader by Toni Wilen
- Amiga Forever - Featured in the 2006 edition
- BkDisk - BK-0010/BK-0011 disk utility by Serge Vakulenko [Russian site]
- Casio Utilities - Casio pocket computer utility by Marcus von Cube
- CPCDiskXP - Amstrad CPC disk utility by Óscar Sanchez
- DPXTOOLS - Oberheim DPX-1 utilities by Kris Van de Cappelle
- Fdio - HP9845 disk utility by Ansgar Kückes
- floimg - Atari ST disk utility by Pera Putnik
- HCDisk - HC disk utility by George Chirtoacã
- LibDsk - John Elliott's floppy disc / disc image access library
- ManageDsk - Ludovic Deplanque's EDSK disk utility
- mdisk (Yahoo group) - Mirage disk utility by Craig Vanderborgh
- PALE - Camputers Lynx emulator by Pete Todd
- Prophet2000Tools - Prophet 2000/2002 sampler tools by ///E-Synthesist
- RealSpectrum - Sinclair Spectrum emulator from Ramsoft
- SainT - Atari ST emulator by Arnaud Carré
- SamDisk - SAM Coupé disk utility
- SimCoupe - SAM Coupé emulator for Windows/Mac/Unix/...
- Vcc - Tandy Color Computer 3 emulator by Joseph Forgione
- WinAPE - Amstrad CPC emulator by Richard Wilson
- WinTRD - TR-DOS utilities by Alexandr Medvedev
- WinUAE - Windows port of the UAE Amiga Emulator
Plus many other LibDsk-enabled applications for Windows!
Simon Owen
simon@simonowen.com