cagney@chook.ua.oz (Andrew Cagney - aka Noid) (10/14/89)
Could some one please post some instructions explaining exactly what /dev/dos? devices should be created. Any way: This dosread works fine with a PC-230's *floppy*disks*. Version 1.4a of dosread did not work with out a patch. I'll post what happens for HD's when I know how to use this. Noid.
evans@ditsyda.oz (Bruce Evans) (10/16/89)
In article <623@augean.OZ> cagney@chook.ua.oz (Andrew Cagney - aka Noid) writes: >Could some one please post some instructions explaining exactly what >/dev/dos? devices should be created. The new one is the same as the one I posted a few weeks ago (now it's official). The relevant parts of the header are repeated below. You need to make a device /dev/dosC for the DOS hard disk. This should be a link to /dev/hdx, where 'x' is the DOS partition. Also make /dev/dosA linked to /dev/at0 or /dev/fd0, and /dev/dosB if you have 2 floppies. WARNING. /dev/hd1 for DOS is very unlikely to work immediately. See the 2nd paragraph below. The best solution seems to be to modify *all* old wini drivers and adjust some partition tables to match what the old drivers actually gave (round up odd sectors to even), if necessary for old Minix partitions. --- The interface to the hard disk is different. The program does not know anything about partition tables. You have to create /dev/dosC for drive C, etc. On my system, this is a link to /dev/hd1. There is a gotcha. This partition normally starts at sector 17, and the Minix wini drivers gratuitously round up partitions to an even sector, losing the first sector. This is easily fixed by deleting some code from the drivers (see e.g. my protected mode postings). However, if your Minix partitions happened to start at an odd boundary, they would become inaccessible. This may not be much of a problem with partitions other than hd1; perhaps Minix fdisk avoided creating them. (?) Many people have been confused by running mkfs on hd1 and trying for one too many blocks. A related but unsolvable problem is that if there are an odd number of sectors in a DOS partition, DOS may use the last one, and this version of dosread will not be able to read it. --- -- Bruce Evans evans@ditsyda.oz.au