My favorite way to format floppies is with dd:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0a count=2880 bs=512k

This way if the command succeeds I know that every 512k block on the 
floppy is good.
If the above command fails I usually throw out the floppy.

Regards,

Glendon Gross


Hisashi T Fujinaka wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Nov 2004, Ben Collver wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 12:01:16PM -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>>
>>> One tip -- I've found that floppies work a lot better when you
>>> re-format them yourself on the floppy drive that you are going to be
>>> booting them on. I typically get much lower error rates on those.
>>
>>
>> I can confirm that tip.  Another thing that saves grief is to do
>> something like "cmp /dev/rfd0a /path/floppy-image" to verify they are
>> indeed the same.  This is usually how I catch that a floppy has gone
>> bad.
>>
>> I prefer CD or net boot.
>
>
> I originally just responded to Perry, but I did just that. fdformat
> until I found a floppy with no errors, then dd onto that floppy. I think
> of the 11 floppies I used, 5 gave errors (resolved with repeated
> fdformat) and 6 gave none "out of the box". After having trouble with
> the floppies with possible errors, of course I went to "fresh" floppies.
>
> The install guide is not very clear about how to make cds, netboot, etc.
> In fact, I know that I can give the cds a block size (for speed? for
> data integrity? I don't know) but I had to use google to find that out.
>
> I have a hard time navigating the documents to find out simple things
> like "how to install NetBSD". (Yes, I checked the install docs first.)
> That's why I ask here. That, coupled with broken install sets in
> current, is a large pain in the tuckus. Once I get things installed, I'm
> fine, but holy crap do I have a hard time doing the initial install.
>