Fdrawcmd.sys

Introduction

Fdrawcmd.sys is a floppy filter driver for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista.

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.

Features

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 standard Windows floppy driver
• No need to disable virus-scanners for floppy access

Download

Version 1.0.1.9, last updated 9th February 2007 [changelog]

FdInstall.exe (107K) - installer for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista (x86 and x64)

Links

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
• 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
• RealSpectrum - Sinclair Spectrum emulator from Ramsoft
• SamDisk - SAM Coupé disk utility
• SimCoupe - SAM Coupé emulator for Windows/Mac/Un*x/...
• Vcc - Tandy Color Computer 3 emulator by Joseph Forgione
• WinTRD - TR-DOS utilities by Alexandr Medvedev
• WinUAE - Windows port of the UAE Amiga Emulator