As a newbie to Linux, I need to know does Linux have a good disk editor
for floppies? I need to read a non standard floppy format, and copy
disks with it.
The situation is this. I work as an 'Electronic genius' (hence the url)
repairing electronic hardware for industry. One of my customers has a
machine for cutting out glass which boots and receives data from a 720K
pc compatible floppy drive. Although the drive is pc compatible, the
format certainly isn't. The disk is written by a drive in an external
box, which talks to his pc through a com port & dongle. Without a good
boot floppy, he can't run the machine or cut glass at all, and he can't
duplicate the boot disk. This system is unreliable and he is held to
ransom or just left in the lurch completely by the manufacturer. The pc
also has the cad package used to set work up, and the only transfer to
the cutter is by moving a 720k floppy from one drive to another. I have
just got it operating after being down for a week with floppy problems.
I have 3 floppies from them
1. A dud system floppy (bad sector).
2. A good system floppy (which I can't afford to mess with until I
crack the system.
3. A data floppy which has 1 file purely for cracking the system, to
which I can do anything.
I have tried
1. Norton diskedit.(v6.0 for Dos & 2.0 for Windoze). Even using the /M
option, I get sector not found errors.
2. Norton Disk Doctor for Windoze(ndd/rebuild) It grunts & groans and
then returns catastrophic faults on what are good disks.
3. Scandisk :-)). This sits with a blue screen for a number of seconds
and then quits with the error "Scandisk cannot examine this disk"
4. I can't even mount it with Linux :-(
Has anyone got any ideas, dodges, hacks, or anything to help on this
one?
My customer will pay for some 720k floppy drives if anyone has a few. I
am in Ireland. (He's using the WD 1772 controller, which only goes to
double density). The system will not read a 1.44M drive.
--
Regards
Declan Moriarty.
