On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Eric Smith wrote:
> Some PC floppy controllers can handle single density (FM) and others
> can't. All can handle double density (MFM). I was lucky with both
> motherboards I've used for this, an Asus P2B-F (Pentium 2/3 slot 1) and
> an Asus A7M266-D (dual Athlon).
Cool! My big (sic) home linux box is a 1998-vintage Asus board,
might even be a P2B variant.
> It's easy to get them working in Linux. You just need an appropriate
> cable.
I can RTFM, but is this a handwired cable? Is there any vestigial
correspondence between floppy pinouts (3.5, 5.25. 8)?!
> If you just want a "raw" image, you can use the setfdprm utility
> (from the util-linux or fdutils packages) to set the parameters (bytes
> per sector, etc.). Then you can dd the contents of the floppy to a file.
I figured decoding CPM disks is pretty much done, and trivial
if I gotta cobble it up. I'll do it in Perl!
> I archive the contents of 8-inch disks into DMK format using a
> program I wrote called rfloppy, which is part of my dmklib package:
> http://dmklib.brouhaha.com/
> It automatically figures out the characteristics of the floppy.
WIll go look at tonight!
Received on Thu Dec 09 2004 - 20:10:37 GMT