On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
> Thanks
> It has some good information, some errors, and some good and bad guesses
> (such as saying that it is probably possible to read hard sectored disks
> with PC hardware)
If you're refering to 'fixed format devices', they seem to be referring to
OS device nodes - such as "/dev/fd0h360", not physical (hard-sectored)
devices/disks.
> Are you trying to transfer files, or just read raw sectors?
For now, I just want to be able to copy disks without having to resort to
using teledisk on a machine running DOS.
> Which "odd formats" are you trying to read?
I was making a generalization... I've been able to successfully read
RX-50's created with teledisk using this method:
root_at_dualie:~# setfdprm /dev/fd1 qd sect=10 cyl=80 head=1
root_at_dualie:~# dd if=/dev/fd1 of=myfd.img
800+0 records in
800+0 records out
root_at_dualie:~#
I've also been successful with an Osborne Executive disk written with
teledisk:
root_at_dualie:~# setfdprm /dev/fd1 dd sect=5 cyl=40 head=1 ssize=1024
root_at_dualie:~# dd if=/dev/fd1 of=myfd.img bs=1k
200+0 records in
200+0 records out
root_at_dualie:~#
To me, it looks like the hardest part will be attempting to determine what
format the disk is in, automatically. Any ideas? My best guess is to do
a guess-and-check method, of course this would be tough to verify every
possibility, such as varied sector sizes (although it would be possible).
I'm guessing that I'll have to use a raw floppy ioctl to make that work.
One last thing, I found a reference to a program that could decode
teledisk 'normal' compression images in past postings to classiccmp, but
it's gone away and I didn't grab a copy before it did. Anyone know where
I could find it? Here's the original URL:
http://www.conknet.com/~w_kranz/WTELEDSK.HTM
Pat
> --
> Fred Cisin cisin_at_xenosoft.com
> XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
>
>
>
> On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
>
> > Quite a while ago (and maybe more than once) we had a thread on
> > reading/writing 'odd' disk formats. I thought about it again, typed a few
> > words into google, and found this:
> >
> > http://fdutils.linux.lu/Fdutils.html#SEC22
> >
> > It looks like setfdprm and superformat will do much of what's necessary in
> > working with 'odd' format disks. I haven't played much with it yet, but
> > I've verified it works for setting the density, heads, cyls, and
> > sect/track of the disk to write to. However, it doesn't allow for
> > setting an initial sector number - something that's necessary for some
> > formats. Using the program "fdrawcmd" should overcome any obsticles, but
> > will require more work to be useful.
> >
> > I just thought I'd pass this along in case people would find it useful.
--
"This fucking university has shown time and time again that it is
completely fucking incompetent when it comes to employing technology"
-- Anonymous
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Received on Wed Oct 16 2002 - 18:11:00 BST
