Excerpts from netbsd: 25-Apr-98 RFC: My fd* wish list :) Brian C.
Grayson@ece.ute (7866*)

> However,
> there are already 8 meaningful formats in fd.c, plus
> several new formats that ought to be added:
> 
> - the format that was probed at boot time.  Some of the
>   code already assumes this meaning for type 0, but this
>   does not allow one to override the boot-up format with
>   1.44M, since they are both type 0.
  
Note that there are only 7 formats defined in the floppy
driver's table. Minor 0 is already the "boot-up" format.
The manpage fdc(4) describes it.
(This means, what you describe in your PR is "intended
behaviour" if I got it correctly.)

> - a user-defined, run-time modifiable format, for
>   people who want to play around with formats.  (Anyone
>   besides me???  :)

Some time ago, I've modified the floppy driver to
read OS/9 floppies, which have 256 bytes/sector and
either 16 or 32 sectors per track.

>   The only bad news is that changing the minor numbers to
> use more bits for format (and less for drive, but how many
> people really have 2^5 floppy drives on one machine?)

There are 20 bits available for the minor number now...

I fully agree that we need more formats, or even a user
definable format slot. But I wouldn't hack the existing
fd driver beyond recognition - it should be more or less
rewritten, split into controller and drive parts and made
as machine independant as possible.
It only needs somebody to do it...

best regards
Matthias