CP/M disc formats
The disc format used is to some extent implementation dependent. CP/M has
no standard system (like the DOS boot record) to store disc parameters on the
disc. Some individual systems use their own boot records (eg Amstrad PCW) but
in general the only way to determine a format is to use a program like
DISKSTAT on the computer which generated the discs.
The sectors of some discs may be software skewed -
again, the best way to determine this is to examine the translation table on
the source computer.
The layout of a disc is:
- Zero or more reserved tracks;
- One or more data blocks, a multiple of 1k in size. The data blocks can
span tracks and usually contain multiple sectors.
- Any spare sectors - ignored by CP/M.
There is one directory, which occupies one or more blocks at the start of
the file space. The directory contains 32-byte entries.
CP/M v1.4 format
CP/M v2.2 format
CP/M v3.1 format
CP/M v4.1 (DOS Plus) format
Amstrad CP/M formats
