Floppy format

[Michael G. Beirne]

In article <1991Mar7.120501.23194 at ims.alaska.edu> you write:
>In article <1991Mar6.001518.15066 at ra.src.umd.edu> zafar at phoenix.src.umd.edu (Sohail Zafar) writes:
>>Hi everyone,
>>	I have a question about formating floppies on unixpc. First I don't
>>know the difference between /dev/rfp020 and /dev/rfp021.  Secondly, I
>
>>The third question is that can you use a floppy formatted on a spark
>>station where the device is /dev/rfd0c.  What I mean to say is that
>>if I can use cpio on /dev/rfd0c on my university sun I won't have to
>>wait forever to load using kermit. Is there a way or not?  I have
>>tried but without any luck.  Floppies formatted on unixpc are recognized
>>on Sun (I can cpio and tar) but any floppy formatted on Sun is not
>>recognized by unixpc nor is any information written by Sun on a diskette
>>formatted on the pc itself.  I was wondering if anyone had any idea as
>>to how to use a floppy on both Sun and unixpc.  What I think is because
>>of the 9 sectors per track problem.

Get mtools from osu-cis or other archive. The unix-pc requires a VHB(volume
header block) to be in the first sector of each floppy and most other
systems do not. You can read a floppy in a C program if you open the device
and then initialize the VHB via a system call. Mtools has several working
programs to do this and reads DOS 360K floppies quite well. If you
know the number of sectors, tracks, and the sector size of the floppy
you want to read and the floppy isn't High Density and  you have the
hardware to hook it up, reading a floppy from another system shouldn't be to
hard. Or you could convince the Sun to write DOS format floppies and just
use Mtools to read them.

Mike Beirne
--
mikebe at i88.isc.com or beirne at chinet.chi.il.us