On Fri, 15 Jan 1999 09:28:27 -0800, Declan Moriarty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > I need to read a non standard floppy format, and copy
>> > disks with it.
>>" Your dongle is formatting the 720k disk as such..
>> 80 tracks (concentric circles on the disk)
>> 80 sectors (pie-shaped wedges of the disk)
>> and places 80 bytes of data on each sector.
>> This layout is the same on both sides of the disk
>> An unformatted 720k floppy can hold 1000k when blank
>> You can see this is like saying exactly 1Meg.
>> Your Dongle is giving you exactly 1Meg of Drawing Data not 720k
>> like dos does."
Though I don't know exactly how it's done, the "tomsrtbt" single-floppy Linux
distribution formats a 1.44MB floppy to 1.722MB. It does this by creating a new
device table entry /dev/fd0u1722. This new device is capable of reading,
writing, and formatting floppy disks to 82 tracks with 21 sectors per track.
I believe that the instructions that come with the distribution tell how to do
this, or they may give pointers. The home page for tomsrtbt is:
http://www.toms.net/rb
If it's documented enough, or if you contact the author, you might be able to
use that information to create your own /dev/fd0u1000 device, or something like
that, which will be able to access your non-standard floppy.
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Edward C. Lange "Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- W. C. Fields
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