Linux and 8" diskettes?

From: David Wollmann <dwollmann_at_ibmhelp.com>
Date: Sat Jan 23 12:18:13 1999

On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Tony Duell wrote:

> >
> >
> > I've been thinking about trying to use my Microtech 8" drive unit, which is
> > attached to a fairly standard FDC, to read IBM 3740-format (Sys/23, Sys/36,
> > Displaywriter, etc.) diskettes from Linux. I did some reading on 'fdutils' and
> > found one brief mention of 8" diskettes, but nothing really useful, for obvious
> > reasons I guess. Has anyone tried this or anything like it on Linux?
>
>
> I have never tried hooking up an 8" drive, but I have used the FDRAWCMD
> ioctl() call to read and write alien disks on this linux box.
>
> This ioctl() is almost undocumented. The best way to figure out how to
> use it is to read the kernel sources, and have the Intel data book
> handy. All I can say is that when you have worked it out, it's a lot
> easier to handle alien disks under linux than under MS-DOS (I did that
> once, and it drove me even more insane...)

kernel sources I've got, and plenty of 'em. (I'm thinking seriously about
trying 2.2.0-final, for the SCSI driver fixes--maybe the MTIOCGET ioctl() will
see EOD and EOT now.)

>
> If I get a chance I'll throw together a text file documenting the
> parameters to FDRAWCMD so that at least you don't have to do the same
> hacking that I did.
>
Received on Sat Jan 23 1999 - 12:18:13 GMT