System And Non-System Disks; Frmat. Sysgen And Copy - Epson TF-20 Reference Manual

Fig. 3.1
Of this total, tracks 0 through 3 (sides 0 and 1) are used as the system area
(for the operating system of the TF-20), the first 8 sectors of track 4 (side 0)
are used as the directory area and track 39 is reserved. Thus, the file area
available for the user is 278K bytes. If the disk is a system disk, the amount
will be reduced by the 8K bytes occupied by the system program (which
operates Disk BASIC in the HX-20).
For each flexible disk, 64 directory areas are reserved. Thus, the maximum
number of files that can be created on a single disk is 64 However, a new
directory area is required for every 256 records (32K bytes) of a file and this
will have an effect on the total number of files that can be created.

3.2 System and Non-System Disks

The disks which can be used in the TF-20 are divided into system and
non-system disks. The differences between the two are as follows.
Flexible Disk
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available for use by the user.
3.3 FORMAT, SYSGEN and COPY
These two commands and one utility program are used to perform
necessary operations to your disks: to format them, to create new system
disks and to create backup disks.
(1) FRMAT
Before a disk can be used, the address data must be written into the ID
field and all other data necessary for data storage must be present on the
disk. The process of writing this data to the disk is called initilization. Disks
supplied by EPSON are already initialized and can be used immediately as
non-system disks. However, disks other than those supplied by EPSON or
those on which data has been destroyed must be initialized by the user.
This is done by the FRMAT command.
To format a disk to be usable in the TF-20, input FRMAT followed by the
drive name in which the disk you wish to format is set. When a disk is
formatted, all of the data on the disk (including the system program) will be
destroyed. Therefore, the HX-20 asks for confirmation by displaying the
message "Are you sure?". Input "Y" from the keyboard if you wish to
execute the statement and "N" if you wish to cancel. See 4.4 Commands
and Statements for details.
3-3