scott@tg.UUCP (01/18/87)
<The Line-Eater is perpetuated by IBM ;->
I post this before the largest group of IBM PC users I know and am
asking for help on a problem that I, nor the local "gurus" I have
talked with, can answer. This problems concerns trying to read a
non-DOS partition, sector by sector, under DOS.
A brief background: I bought my XT-clone (with Belltron ROM) from
someone who gave me his PC-DOS 2.0 and Xenix 3.0 (this person upgraded
to an AT-clone). This machine has an EGA card, 640K, 2 floppies, and a
20Mb CMS hard disk. The machine runs the Xenix sold to me and I just
recently bought PC-DOS 3.20.
Now the problem: I guess the version of the Belltron ROM is not
exactly perfect for Xenix since just before I went to do my backups, I
tried to do a "doscat" from one of the floppies to the hard disk so the
file can get on the backup. Well, something happened and "doscat"
crapped out on the disk and flakey things began to happen. So when I
tried to run fsck, the system panic'ed and said it could not load init
on reboot. After trying a multitude of logical means to try to access
the hard disk I now have a Xenix partition with two files that I really
have to retrieve--somehow! (This will teach me about doing better
backups :-))
Solutions already tried: Anything with the Xenix boot and root
floppies including trying to build something that can be used from the
Xenix 3.1 on a real XT at my office. ROM calls, DOS calls, etc. (INT
13 included) as documented in Peter Norton's book and the DOS Technical
Reference (FLAME: I can't believe the Tech. Ref. is $100, and the
Norton book for around $20 is better!). I think I tried everything
EXCEPT programming the controller directly (more on that later).
FLAME ON AND REALLY HIGH: I called SCO asking for help. I gave them
the serial number off the disks and gave them the serial number of the
machine. Then, when they asked me who I am, they got upset! I tried
to explain to them I bought the machine and Xenix from the original
owner, but they insisted that they couldn't talk with me about my
problem. They said this was so-called protection against illegal
copies being circulated. I asked about transferring the "license" and
got a response of lots of money (it was so obnoxiously high, I slammed
the phone down in the person's ear).
TOWERING INFERNO:
I UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM OF ILLEGAL SOFTWARE, BUT I DID NOT STEAL THIS
COPY OF XENIX! I BOUGHT IT AND HAVE THE RECIPT TO PROVE IT! AND WHEN
I OFFERED TO DEMONSTRATE THAT FACT TO SCO, THEY MADE IT SOUND LIKE I
WAS NOT ON THE LEVEL--EVENTHOUGH I WAS WILLING TO MEET ALL THEIR
REQUIRMENTS TO PROVE THIS EXCEPT BUY ANOTHER COPY (which I could not
afford). THE DEC FOLKS THINK THE NEW VMS LICENSE TRANSFER POLICIES ARE
OBNOXIOUS, TRY SCO!!!
***NOTE: I am planning to either buy MicroPort's System/V or wait and
get MINIX. Also, responses to above flame will be routed to /dev/null.
FLAME DOWSED!
HELP!! PLEASE!!
Those who allegedly know says the only thing I can do is try to read
the Xenix partition from DOS. I tried all the ROM and DOS calls trying
to specify the hard disk in doing this and it doesn't work. When I
tried it, the ROM calls just returned errors and the DOS calls crashed
the system. I am not ruling out the possibility of the fact that I did
something wrong in using the DOS or ROM calls. So, if there is any one
that can help me read my Xenix partition from DOS (or if you can tell
me how to get the Xenix partition up without destroying the contents of
the disk), it would be greatly appreciated.
The only thing I ask is that you e-mail your responses directly to me!
this will keep net traffic down (which is already too high :-)) and
will allow me to review the responses. I will post the final program
that worked, with credits to all that helped, to the net since I feel
that this might be beneficial to others.
Let me thank everyone in advance for all their help!
Scott Barman
{pyrnj, philabs}!tg!scott