howard@wbcs.UUCP (Howard Modell) (02/16/89)
I (or rather a customer of mine) has a relatively frequent need to read data from DOS formatted floppies using an Apollo. The "why" of it isn't pertinent, but the customer states that his budget is such that getting a PC for the purpose isn't practical at this time, nor is does it seem appropriate to buy one of Apollo's DPCI/DPCC/DPCE integration solutions. He doesn't need a DOS engine or processing capabilities at all ... he just needs to be able to read DOS formatted data, and the only devices he has with floppy drives are Apollos. The preferred solution would be an Apollo-based utility that performs this chore and nothing else (or little else). It doesn't have to be specifically Unix-based, though it is not an obstacle if it is. Does anyone out there (1) know of such a program, (2) have such a program (preferably with source they could send me), and if so, could they send it to me? Replies should be sent to: howard@ncrwic!wbcs.UUCP or howard@hplabs!hp-sdd!ncr-sd!ncrwic!wbcs.UUCP or howard@scubed!ncr-sd!ncrwic!wbcs.UUCP or howard@uunet!ncrlnk!ncrwic!wbcs.UUCP
hollaar%cs.utah.edu@wasatch.UUCP (Lee Hollaar) (02/17/89)
In article <137@wbcs.UUCP> howard@wbcs.UUCP (Howard Modell) writes: > I (or rather a customer of mine) has a relatively frequent need to read data > from DOS formatted floppies using an Apollo. The "why" of it isn't pertinent, > but the customer states that his budget is such that getting a PC for the > purpose isn't practical at this time, nor is does it seem appropriate to > buy one of Apollo's DPCI/DPCC/DPCE integration solutions. He doesn't need > a DOS engine or processing capabilities at all ... he just needs to be able > to read DOS formatted data, and the only devices he has with floppy drives > are Apollos. > > The preferred solution would be an Apollo-based utility that performs this > chore and nothing else (or little else). It doesn't have to be specifically > Unix-based, though it is not an obstacle if it is. > > Does anyone out there (1) know of such a program ... We have such a program, consisting of a device driver for directly controlling the floppy disk and a utility program that understands the DOS file system (including subdirectories and DOS-style wildcards). It can work with any format floppy disk (360 Kbyte or 1.2 Mbyte; 8, 9, or 15 sectors per track; 1 or 2 sided disks), can read, write, or delete files on the floppy as well as listing its directory, and can do either binary read/writes or will translate the PC <cr><lf> line terminators to or from the Apollo standard newlines. It currently works with 9.7, and is being ported to 10.X. The bad news is that we won't be giving this little goody away, but will be licensing it for a nominal charge. We will be sending information to the local Apollo offices in a couple of weeks, or you can either contact me and I'll send you the information about ordering. Lee Hollaar Email: hollaar@cs.utah.edu Mail: Contexture, Inc. Attn: PCdisk information Post Office Box 8721 Salt Lake City UT 84108
davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) (02/18/89)
There was a group of utilities to do just this posted to the unix-pc
group several years ago. Just after that I got rid of my unix-pc. As I
recall I got it to work on Xenix with a five minute hack, so it's pretty
portable in SysV. You may be able to get a copy from someone, or get
back to me after you try.
Your suggested addresses all have bang addresses after the @ and
confuse my mailers. You may get more info with a pure uucp or domain
address or one of the flavor user!node!node@node.domain.
--
bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
{uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -melnz@LUCID.COM (Leonard N. Zubkoff) (02/19/89)
The problem with reading PC formatted floppies on the Apollo is that, at least when I last asked Apollo, the Apollo device driver will only deal with 1024 byte sectors on the floppy, which is what DOmain/OS needs. Unfortunately, the PC world is based on 512 byte sectors. Thus one would need a special device driver that talked to the disk controller directly in order to read PC floppies. If you merely need to be able to transfer data between a PC/AT and an Apollo, that I can help with. If you format the floppy on the Apollo, giving 1024 byte sectors, it can then be accessed by the Apollo and by a PC running a program that accesses the BIOS directly to do floppy I/O. I have a simple program which just treats the floppy as a dumb tape drive and dumps files onto it and can read them back; it works both on the Apollo and PC. Leonard
cantrell@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Keith Cantrell) (02/20/89)
If somebody gets one of these, PLEASE post it.
Thanks,
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Cantrell Phones: hm: 214-492-1088
Integrated Telecom wk: 214-234-3340
USMAIL: EMAIL:
2100 Sonata Ln cantrell@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
Carrollton TX 75007 or
...!uunet!{texsun | killer | letni}!dalitc!keith
-----------------------------------------------------------------------cantrell@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Keith Cantrell) (02/21/89)
In article <8902190215.AA00586@atlantis> lnz@LUCID.COM (Leonard N. Zubkoff) writes: >The problem with reading PC formatted floppies on the Apollo is that, at least >when I last asked Apollo, the Apollo device driver will only deal with 1024 >byte sectors on the floppy, which is what DOmain/OS needs. Unfortunately, the >PC world is based on 512 byte sectors. Thus one would need a special device >driver that talked to the disk controller directly in order to read PC floppies. > This has got to be bullsh*t. Apollo has a pc emulator (i.e. solfware only) that will run on a DN3000 and can read and write pc disks. I used this solfware before, it was too slow, but it did work. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Keith Cantrell Phones: hm: 214-492-1088 Integrated Telecom wk: 214-234-3340 USMAIL: EMAIL: 2100 Sonata Ln cantrell@killer.DALLAS.TX.US Carrollton TX 75007 or ...!uunet!{texsun | killer | letni}!dalitc!keith -----------------------------------------------------------------------
krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) (02/21/89)
I believe that the PC emulator has it's own GPIO driver for the floppy disk. There is an outline of a device driver for the floppy disk that reads MS DOS floppies. I think I saw it in the examples for GPIO in the /domain_examples directory. The example did *not* give you access to the files on the floppy, it just read off all of the blocks into a file on the Apollo disk (it was after all, just a example of how to access the hardware). I believe that there is a program to decode MS DOS directories posted to comp.unix.sources on UUNET.UU.NET which you can get from their archives. Put these two together, and you can probably come up with a program to read MS DOS floppies with the Apollo floppy disk drive. -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter@eddie.mit.edu krowitz%richter@athena.mit.edu krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet (in order of decreasing preference)
huisken@nvpna1.prl.philips.nl (Jos Huisken) (03/04/89)
I once tried to make a driver to read any floppy. Never got it to run though, because of lack of documentation. My goal was to read CP/M floppies with any format. I started with the example in the GPIO directory. If someone has something that works, I'll be delighted. Regards, Jos Huisken __________________________________________________________________________ Jos A. Huisken || NET : huisken@nvpna1.prl.philips.nl Philips Research Laboratories, || PHONE : 31-40-742824 Eindhoven, The Netherlands. || SERI : NLHUISKN:NVPNASA