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:

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


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