bartz@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Edward Bartz) (09/29/89)
I have just become the proud owner of an XT bridgeboard. I
have one small problem however, I need to r/w 720K 3.5" floppies to
transfer data to/from work. I don't have an A1010 drive. Is there
any way to use df0: or df1: on the 2000 side to transfer data to the
bridgeboard ?
Thanks,
Ed Bartz
--
UUCP: bartz@elbereth.uucp
BITNET: bartz@rutphy.bitnet
USSnail: 12 Roosevelt St. South River, NJ 08882swan@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (Joel Swan) (09/30/89)
In article <Sep.29.11.21.42.1989.9935@elbereth.rutgers.edu> bartz@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Edward Bartz) writes:
:
: I have just become the proud owner of an XT bridgeboard. I
:have one small problem however, I need to r/w 720K 3.5" floppies to
:transfer data to/from work. I don't have an A1010 drive. Is there
:any way to use df0: or df1: on the 2000 side to transfer data to the
:bridgeboard ?
:
: Thanks,
: Ed Bartz
:--
:
: UUCP: bartz@elbereth.uucp
: BITNET: bartz@rutphy.bitnet
: USSnail: 12 Roosevelt St. South River, NJ 08882
For a mere $17.75 I bought an amazing Amiga product from Abel Supply called-
CrossDos. CrossDos is very interesting. It is not a mere transfer
program like DOS-to-DOS, but it ADDS MSDOS capabilities to the drives
you already have, WITHOUT disabling them for AmigaDOS!
CrossDos comes with an mfm.device and you must mount your native Amiga
drives using mounlist entries they provide. In the mountlist, you
use l:MSDOSFileSystem, which is also supplied. CrossDos will make any of
your drives (3 1/2", 5 1/4" or HD) read/write MSDOS, PCDOS, or Atari
formated disks! These disks can be accessed by your normal Amiga Utilities
(so long as they go through the trackdisk.device) without any modification.
If you want to access an MSDOS disk, refer to the device name you gave
the MSDOS drive in the mountlist. My df0: is also called A: and my
df1: is also called B:. They also provide an MFORMAT and MDISKCOPY for MSDOS.
For the bridgeboard, you can use AREAD and AWRITE like always, only get the
file from your MSDOS device name. For instance on my AT BB I would say:
AREAD A:NEATDL.ARC a:neatdl.arc -reads arc file from a: (df0: as MSDOS)
or
AWRITE A:PCTEXT b:pctext -copies text from pc drive to b: (df1: in MSDOS
format)
There's also ability to do CR-LF conversions on files and lots of other
neat tricks. (strip high bits, etc.)
I like it a lot. It's very easy to use. Pop in a PC or Atari disk and
do a dir a: or play with the disk from any program. Pop it back out and
pop in an Amiga disk. Pick right up with an Amiga disk. It is very flexible.
The only drawback I see so far is it's speed. When reading/writing/formating
an MSDOS|Atari disk, it eats much to many CPU cycles and boggs down the machine.
It also goes fairly slow, but not slow enough to matter much.
It will alow me to run an Amiga bulletin board for a project at work, and
have the files download to a 3 1/2" MSDOS disk. I can pop it out and
hand it to the person who needs it, no conversions necessary!
CrossDos by Consultron
11280 Parkview
Plymouth, MI 48170
313-459-7271
Read-only demo version is available on PLINK and probably CI$.
I don't work for Consultron, nor am I associated w/them in any way.
I am only amazed at such a product, and by the incredible flexibility
that the Amiga has. WOW!
Hope this helps
Joel E. Swan
PLINK: Amiga*Joel
CI$: 74746,3240