This came at a time when CD-ROMs were not yet ubiquitous and software was distributed on rapidly growing piles of floppies. XDF allowed the user to format a 3½” floppy which normally holds 1,440KB of data to a special format with 1,840KB capacity (well, almost-see below), or almost 28% improvement. Some of IBM’s software packages were also distributed on XDF diskettes.

Yes, Windows (still) uses FAT12 as the default file-system for floppy disks.In 1994, IBM started shipping software with support for XDF, or eXtended Density Format, first in OS/2 Warp and a few months later in PC DOS 7.0. FAT12 for IBM and clones, GEMDOS for the Atari ST and Atari DOS for the Atari 400/800, Disk ][ format for Apple II, OFS/FFS for Amiga, CBMFS for C64, etc.)įigure 1 shows an example of a couple of games available for different platforms with corresponding labels.Īnd if I format the floppy on my Windows PC, does it still remain “IBM

It would indicate both the format of the binaries as well as the file-system layout of the disk (e.g. The boxes would then be marked with the appropriate label indicating which platform the game was for. For example, SSI (Strategic Simulations, Inc.) frequently released their games for Amiga, Apple, Atari ST, Atari 400/800, Commodore 64/128, IBM, and occasionally a few other niche platforms. What exactly is the meaning of “IBM formatted” and what is theĭespite what some may think, in the past, much software was ported to most of the available platforms (which was a pretty big feat since there were so many back then, but without the benefit of cross-platform, portable code frameworks).Īpplication programs were often cross-platform, but cross-platform games were even more common. I have often come across floppy disks in the past that were marketed

Ibm formatted floppy disks