MS-DOS floppies on PC 7300

[egray at fthood.UUCP]

You need mtools...

Mtools is a public domain set of utilities to read and write to MSDOS
diskettes form your Unix machine.  It runs on many System V boxes,
including the 7300.

It has been posted to comp.sources.unix, unix-pc.sources, and The STORE!
If you have trouble getting a copy from a neighboring archive site, I can
mail you the source.

Here is the Readme file from the Mtools 1.3 distribuiton:

Emmet P. Gray				US Army, HQ III Corps & Fort Hood
...!ihnp4!uiucuxc!fthood!egray		Attn: AFZF-DE-ENV
					Directorate of Engineering & Housing
					Environmental Management Office
					Fort Hood, TX 76544-5057

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
				MTOOLS v1.3

This is a collection of MSDOS tools to allow you to read and write to
MSDOS formatted diskettes from a Unix based system.

The following MSDOS commands are emulated:

Mtool 		MSDOS
name		equivalent	Description
-----		----		-----------
mdel		DEL/ERASE	delete a MSDOS file
mdir		DIR		display a MSDOS directory
mmd		MD/MKDIR	make a MSDOS sub directory
mrd		RD/RMDIR	remove a MSDOS sub directory
mread		COPY		read (copy) a MSDOS file to Unix
mren		REN/RENAME	rename an existing MSDOS file
mtype		TYPE		display contents of a MSDOS file
mwrite		COPY		write (copy) a Unix file to MSDOS
*		CD		change working directory

	* by use of the environmental variable MCWD

The formats of IBM PC floppy disk drives are:

   bytes per  sectors per  tracks    number    total     disk   introduced
    sector      track     per side  of sides  capacity   size    in MSDOS
     512         8          40        1        160k      5.25      1.0
     512         9          40        1        180k      5.25      1.1
     512         8          40        2        320k      5.25      2.0
     512         9          40        2        360k      5.25      2.0
     512        15          80        2        1.2M      5.25      3.0
     512         9          80        2        720k       3.5      3.2


The following are typical Unix device names for the IBM formats:

	/dev/rflp		'generic' used first to test the media
	/dev/rflp40t8s1s	40 track 8 sector single sided
	/dev/rflp40t8s2s	40 track 8 sector double sided
	/dev/rflp40t9s1s	40 track 9 sector single sided
	/dev/rflp40t9s2s	40 track 9 sector double sided
	/dev/rflp80t15s2s	80 track 15 sector double sided
	/dev/rflp80t9s2s	3.5 inch 80 track 9 sector double sided

These device names are in the msdos.h file as #defines and must be edited
to match the device names on your system.  If your device driver does not
handle all of the formats shown, then you should leave those particular
devices undefined in the msdos.h file.

The manuals are very terse... it's assumed that the reader is already
familiar with MSDOS.

The use of the environmental variable MCWD to keep track of the current
working directory is a little awkward, especially since there is no
'change directory' command.  Bourne shell users will have to type two
commands to set their working directory, ie:

	MCWD=/TMP
	export MCWD

Wildcards are only applied to filenames and not to directory names.
For example '/usr/local/*.c' is appropriate, but '/usr/l*/main.c' is not.

I really wanted to avoid the use of a 'text' mode and a 'data' mode
when transferring files, but I couldn't find a better way.  It gets rather
confusing and it's quite possible to mess up a file if you apply the
text mode when it is not appropriate (ie: to a COM or EXE file).  Likewise,
if you forget to apply the text mode (to a Unix text file) then if the
file is used under MSDOS, it will be missing carriage returns.  However,
if you aren't going to use the files on your Unix system (you just
intend to hold the files and then transfer them back to MSDOS later) then
you shouldn't use the text mode during either mread or mwrite.  This is
because, the text mode is only useful if the files are gonna be used
under Unix.

Mwrite adds an EOF marker to every file (not just text files).  Mread
ignores all EOF markers.

The MSDOS 'copy' command had to be broken down into two separate Unix
commands since the MSDOS device designations (A: or C:) would be too
clumsy to implement.

There are two shell archives 'masscomp.shar' and 'unixpc.shar' that
contain files specific for the Masscomp minicomputers and the AT&T Unix
PC 7300.

Emmet P. Gray				US Army, HQ III Corps & Fort Hood
...!ihnp4!uiucuxc!fthood!egray		Attn: AFZF-DE-ENV
					Directorate of Engineering & Housing
					Environmental Management Office
					Fort Hood, TX 76544-5057