ISC2.2 DOSSETTE BROKEN AGAIN - old news?

[Jon Ryshpan]

In article <358 at octelb.octel.UUCP> richard at octel.UUCP (Richard Karasik) writes:
>In article <36634 at cup.portal.com> DeadHead at cup.portal.com (Bruce M Ong) writes:
>>The ISC2.2 Dossette will NOT recognize any 1.2 mb floppy that is formated
>>by any REAL command.com.
>...
>
>This is a known problem with ISC and has nothing to do with format.

I've seen a lot of this too.  The select light on the floppy comes on,
then nothing happens except for the console messages

	FD(0) : diskette not present - please insert

Here's my fix.  I wrote a program called starta to read one byte from
/dev/fd0.  Here is is:

======= ======= Starta starts here ======= =======
#include <stdio.h>

main(argc, argv)
int argc;
char **argv;
{
	FILE *fd;

	if ((fd = fopen("/dev/rfd0", "r")) == NULL) {
		perror("cant open /dev/rfd0");
		exit(1);
	}

	if (getc(fd) == EOF) {
		perror("cant access /dev/rfd0");
		exit(1);
	}
	exit(0);
}
======= ======= Starta ends here ======= =======

Then I replaced dossette with the following shell script:

	#!/bin/csh
	starta; /usr/bin/dossette $*

Similar scripts for dosdir, doscopy, etc.

This all seems to work OK.  Dossette seems to be "smart" and to read
the floppy in a way that makes it not work.  Ordinary "dumb" accesses
like the one in starta act as specified in the manual.

The "#!/bin/csh" is important.  If you execute a similar script under
sh, it doesn't work right for dosdir, etc.  Dosdir starts before starta
can finish initializing the drive, so you get one "FD(0) not present"
message before dosdir begins its work.  Wierd no?

It would be nice if I could get the getc() to fail if there is some
problem, line a diskette really not present.  Unfortunately what
happens is that you get a series of messages on the *console* telling
you to put in the floppy.  This is not useful if the console is not the
currently active screen.

Jonathan Ryshpan		<...!uunet!hitachi!jon>

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