acliu@skat.usc.edu (Alejandro Liu) (10/02/89)
<Why do some people still put line eaters> Hi, I was wondering, is there any PD package for the amiga that would let the standard amiga 3.5 drive read MS-DOS disks? Alejandro Liu acliu%skat@usc.edu acliu@skat.usc.edu (Simple .signature, $CHEAP$)
kudla@pawl.rpi.edu (Robert J. Kudla) (10/02/89)
In <20254@usc.edu> acliu@skat.usc.edu (Alejandro Liu) writes:
Alejandro> Hi,
Alejandro> I was wondering, is there any PD package for the amiga that would
Alejandro> let the standard amiga 3.5 drive read MS-DOS disks?
There are at least two (there are actually more but the other ones
I've seen really suck). PCPatch will modify a running copy of PCCopy
(from the Extras disk) to use the internal drive. CrossDos is
available in a read-only version for free; it installs, I believe, as
a device driver and you can treat ms-dos disks as AmigaDos-compatible.
A full version is available for I don't recall how much, it was
something like $50 I think, and there are ads in most of the new
issues of Amiga magazines (I know I saw one in AC). I haven't tried
Crossdos; don't recall where to get it. PCPatch works pretty well,
except there are some AT&T 386 machines here I can't get it to work
with even if I format to 720k (or 360k for that matter).
PCPatch is available, I believe, on one of the Fish disks.
--
Robert Jude Kudla <kudla@pawl.rpi.edu> <kudla@acm.rpi.edu> <fw3s@RPITSMTS>
What noisy cats are we.acliu@skat.usc.edu (Alejandro Liu) (10/06/89)
<Why do some people still put line eaters> In article <20254@usc.edu> acliu@skat.usc.edu (Alejandro Liu) writes: > I was wondering, is there any PD package for the amiga that would >let the standard amiga 3.5 drive read MS-DOS disks? This is the summary of responses I got from that article. Thanks to anybody that replyed to this. Basicly there are 3 packages for reading/writing MS-DOS disks. 1. MS-DOS This is a PD program (available through a Fish Disk) that lets you read files. It can ONLY handle one file at a time and the output goes always to RAM:MS DOS.file. It is also quite slow. 2. PC-Patch This is also available from a Fish disk, and it lets you read and write MeSsy DOS disks. It can handle Formating and data transfers from and to IBM disks, it is still slow but is a major improvement over MS-DOS 3. CrossDOS This is supposed to be the Ultimate MS-DOS<->AmigaDOS utility letting address drives as if they were Amy devices or MS-DOS devices. (No need to unmount or convert anything, data is passed directly to the program as they are read) And it is supposed to be fast too! This is a commercial product and retails for around $30.oo but there is a ReadOnly demo version available for free. 4. Dos2dos This is another commercial program that lets you do that. I have little information on this one though. _______________________ |Again, we would like to thank everybody that replied to my original |post and all the people in the UseNet, without them, this would'nt |been possible Alejandro Liu acliu%skat@usc.edu acliu@skat.usc.edu (Simple .signature, $CHEAP$)
cna@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Na Choon Piaw) (10/06/89)
In article <20334@usc.edu> acliu@skat.usc.edu (Alejandro Liu) writes: >4. Dos2dos > This is another commercial program that lets you do that. I have >little information on this one though. Well, a friend of mine bought this for transferring between his IBM and my Amiga (I'm the local TeXer, working from a <sniff> demo version of AmigaTeX by Tomas Rokicki :-) ). Anyway, I haven't used enough of it to give it much of a review, but what it basically does is to assign a drive to the MS-DOS side, and allow you to do: DOSPROMPT> copy a:*.* fh1: and other stuff like that. You *cannot* use it to access MS-DOS files "on the fly". That drive is forever dedicated to MS-DOS (until you quit from Dos2Dos). It's good for what it does (transferring files), and I'm sure it is quite capable of transferring text files nicely (I haven't bothered much with it...) but I just use CygnusEd Pro to change all the ^Ms to nothing. (Incredible editor --- I though I was gonna have to write a simple filter to do it... [Yes, I'm quite capable of that, so don't send me sources for your own CR-LF converter ;-) ]) >Alejandro Liu >acliu%skat@usc.edu acliu@skat.usc.edu >(Simple .signature, $CHEAP$) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Na Choon Piaw P.O Box, 4067, Berkeley, CA 94704-0067 cna@cory.berkeley.edu Disclaimer: I'm speaking only for myself! piaw@ocf.berkeley.edu "Still on honeymoon with his Amiga...." -------------------------------------------------------------------------
fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) (10/08/89)
Dos2Dos has a number of nice features. It lets you look at a
directory of an MS-DOS disk and it lets you use the asterisk as a wild-card
character. That can really simplify the process of copying a large number
of files.
However, the PCUtilities supplied on the Workbench 1.2 and WorkBench
1.3 Extras disk do a pretty nice job copying from an unmounted 5.25" disk
drive. And when you add PCPatch2 to the directory you can copy from a 3.5"
or 5.25" disk formatted for 360K or 720K and it doesn't matter if the drive
is already mounted. If it is the program just displays the "DF#:BUSY"
icon.
You can make an exact duplicate of the file, but if you select
"Text-7" or "Text-8" filtering the CR-LF pairs will be replaced with LFs.
It's a very nice utility and it's free!
--Fabbian Dufoe
350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South
St. Petersburg, Florida 33705
813-823-2350
UUCP: ...uunet!pdn!jc3b21!fgd3johnm@spudge.UUCP (John Munsch) (10/10/89)
In article <20334@usc.edu> acliu@skat.usc.edu (Alejandro Liu) writes: >4. Dos2dos > This is another commercial program that lets you do that. I have >little information on this one though. If I had thought that no one else would reply then I would have already. Put as simply as possible, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. I have the misfortune of owning it and find that not only is it buggy, it is also slow, intolerant of minor drive errors, and has a syntax that shows such complete laziness that I really cannot believe that this is a commercial product. It is the second worst piece of commercial software I've ever seen*. It will abort copies of multiple files midway if it has a disk error, asks yes/no questions that will only take one response, handles typeahead badly or not at all, etc. Even MS-DOS is better than this, and that is the worst criticism I can imagine... Buy CrossDos and thank god for the day it was written. John Munsch * The worst piece of commercial software I've ever seen was Lattice C for the Atari ST, which was so bad that a shareware compiler written by one man on an Atari ST with one(!) floppy drive and 512K out performed it. The code it produced was SOOO buggy and SOOO slow that I'm amazed that Lattice has never issued a formal public apology and refunded the money of everyone who ever even thought of buying it. To this day, I have cold chills when I remember that linker.
arao@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (aswath.k.rao) (10/11/89)
CrossDos mentions "Transformar" in their manual. What exactly does it do? Why was it discontinued? What would be a fair market price, if someone is willing? Thanks Aswath Rao att!houtz!arao
acliu@skat.usc.edu (Alejandro Liu) (10/11/89)
In article <4641@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> arao@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (aswath.k.rao) writes: ______________________________________________________________________ | |CrossDos mentions "Transformar" in their manual. What exactly does it do? Why | According to some information I had, Transformer was a MS-DOS Software only emulator for the Amiga. (Back then before the Bridgeboard and the A2000/A500 were around). As can be expected from software emulators it was slow and buggy. When the Bridgeboard for the A2000 and the Sidecar for the A1000 appeared, the Transformer, quietly dissapeared from the market. Alejandro Liu acliu%skat@usc.edu acliu@skat.usc.edu (Simple .signature, $CHEAP$)