brad@bcars241.bnr.ca (Brad Shapcott) (02/27/91)
Possibly someone out there has experience coaxing Atari ST compatible diskettes out of a SUNSparc station 1. I've installed MTOOLS, which supposedly does MSDOS compatible diskettes. I was under the impression that this format was very close to Atari`s. But beyond being able to read the directory and the first few bytes of any file, there doesn't seem to be much I can do with a disk made this way. I tried formatting on both the SUN and the Atari, and the disks work fine on the SUN. Same problem as above though when I put the disk into the ST. Now, I had to reconfigure the kernel on my machine, hunt down manual entries galore and try every sneaky way to get the disks to work. Right now the only other step I can see is to either change the source to MTOOLS for full Atari compatibility, or to write a driver for the Atari that reads MSDOS and writes Atari. Any better ideas? Anybody know of tools like this that already exist? brad@bnr
andy@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Andy Gray) (02/28/91)
In article <1991Feb27.132904.748@bigsur.uucp> brad@bcars362.UUCP (Brad Shapcott) writes: >Possibly someone out there has experience coaxing Atari ST compatible >diskettes out of a SUNSparc station 1. I've installed MTOOLS, which >supposedly does MSDOS compatible diskettes. I was under the impression that >this format was very close to Atari`s... [misc deleted...] > Right now the only >other step I can see is to either change the source to MTOOLS for full Atari >compatibility, or to write a driver for the Atari that reads MSDOS and writes >Atari. Any better ideas? Anybody know of tools like this that already exist? Actually, it's quite easy. As you said, the MS-DOS and Atari disk formats are very close; all that differs, in fact, is the boot sector. All you have to do is write an MS-DOS boot sector onto a standard ST disk (I use DC Formatter 3.0 for this), and your disk should read and write okay on an MS-DOS machine. Once you've done this, MTOOLS should be perfectly happy with the disk. I've successfully transferred files between my ST and a Sparc station like this several times. Note, however, that disk must be formatted in standard format - 80 tracks, 9 sectors/track, and non-skewed (non-twisted). -- Andy ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andy Gray andy@jarthur.claremont.edu Platt Campus Center andy@jarthur.UUCP Harvey Mudd College ...uunet!jarthur!andy Claremont, CA 91711 agray@HMCVAX.BITNET
cliff@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Clifford Stein) (02/28/91)
In article <1991Feb27.132904.748@bigsur.uucp> brad@bcars362.UUCP (Brad Shapcott) writes: > >very close to Atari`s. But beyond being able to read the directory and the >first few bytes of any file, there doesn't seem to be much I can do with a disk >made this way. I tried formatting on both the SUN and the Atari, and the disks >work fine on the SUN. Same problem as above though when I put the disk into >the ST. > >brad@bnr I think I know what your problem is. Mtools works fine going from ST -> SUN but I had problems going from SUN->ST. The directories were intact, and so was the first sector or so of info for each file but that was all. I think that the problem is that one of the flags needs to be set when you compile Mtools for use withthe ST. Try compiling the init.c code with the DUP_FLAG set; it has something to do with rewriting FAT tables. I haven't had a chance to give it a shot, so I don't know if it works for sure. (There was some discussion about this a few months ago, I beleive. Apparently this doesn't bother PC's.) --Cliff ------------ cliff@jarthur.claremont.edu | "Ted Striker? Never heard of him. Wait! cliff@jarthur.uucp | That's not exactly true. We were like ...uunet!jarthur!cliff | brothers." cstein@hmcvax.bitnet | --Buck Murdoch
boyd@nu.cs.fsu.edu (Mickey Boyd) (02/28/91)
In article <1991Feb27.132904.748@bigsur.uucp>, brad@bcars362.UUCP (Brad Shapcott) writes: > >Possibly someone out there has experience coaxing Atari ST compatible diskettes >out of a SUNSparc station 1. I've installed MTOOLS, which supposedly does I asked this question some time ago, here is the response I got: ------------------------------ In article <1991Jan24.222529.28498@mailer.cc.fsu.edu>, boyd@mailer.cc.fsu.edu (Mickey Boyd) writes: |> Could you please email/post which version of MTOOLS you are using, and |> any |> ifdefs you had to change to make it work (if any). Thanks! I am using Mtools 2.0.3. No #ifdefs have to be changed. The current version of Mtools and all the patches are available via anonymous ftp from cerl.cecer.army.mil (129.229.1.101). -- Dipl.-Inform. Rainer Klute klute@irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de Univ. Dortmund, IRB klute@unido.uucp, klute@unido.bitnet Postfach 500500 |)|/ Tel.: +49 231 755-4663 D-4600 Dortmund 50 |\|\ Fax : +49 231 755-2386 ------------------------------- Hope this helps. -- ---------------------------------+------------------------------------- Mickey R. Boyd | "It's amazing how much growing up FSU Computer Science | resembles being too tired." Technical Support Group | email: boyd@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu | - Heinlein ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------
bro@eunomia.rice.edu (Douglas Monk) (03/02/91)
In article <11000@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> cliff@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Clifford Stein) writes: >In article <1991Feb27.132904.748@bigsur.uucp> brad@bcars362.UUCP (Brad Shapcott) writes: >>[...] But beyond being able to read the directory and the >>first few bytes of any file, there doesn't seem to be much I can do with a >>disk made this way. I tried formatting on both the SUN and the Atari, and >>the disks work fine on the SUN. Same problem as above though when I put the >>disk into the ST. >[...] Mtools works fine going from ST -> SUN but I had problems going from >SUN->ST. SUN->PC will also work fine. The problem with the earlier versions of mtools was that by default, it only wrote one copy of the FAT, and Ataris depend on the second copy. IBMs work OK with only the one FAT for some reason. >Try compiling the init.c code with the DUP_FLAG set; it has something to do >with rewriting FAT tables. I haven't had a chance to give it a shot, so >I don't know if it works for sure. I had the problem, and this is indeed the fix, except the flag is DUP_FAT. As someone else pointed out, a later MTOOLS version fixed this problem, but I have had trouble with our site's installation of it, so I still use my own copy (which *I* support :-). Caveats: like IBM formatted disks, there won't be a random serial number on the disk, so you need to exercise caution putting them in: either keep them write-protected in the Atari or swap another disk in and out between any two of them. Also remember that you can only use double-sided regular density (720K) floppy format), not single-sided (360K) nor high density (1.44M) formats. Doug Monk (bro@rice.edu) Disclaimer: These views are mine, not necessarily my organization's.
brad@bcars241.bnr.ca (Brad Shapcott) (03/04/91)
In article <1991Mar2.045404.2229@rice.edu> bro@eunomia.rice.edu (Douglas Monk) writes: > >SUN->PC will also work fine. The problem with the earlier versions of mtools >was that by default, it only wrote one copy of the FAT, and Ataris depend on >the second copy. IBMs work OK with only the one FAT for some reason. > >I had the problem, and this is indeed the fix, except the flag is DUP_FAT. >As someone else pointed out, a later MTOOLS version fixed this problem, >but I have had trouble with our site's installation of it, so I still use >my own copy (which *I* support :-). I ftp'ed MTOOLS 2.0.3 (originally trying 129.229.1.101, which gave me truncated files three times, so I think the files there are messed -- I eventually got them from 129.217.64.63 where they were in comp/msdos/mtools). The patches that were in the directory seem to be unecessary, as they are already applied to the sources there. Anyways, I think the only thing I did was add "#define SPARC 1" to devices.c (this would change if you were on a different machine) and compiled. The disks I used were Atari ST formatted with a MSDOS boot sector written over with DCFormat 3.0 (this program will also do an 2-9-80 normal (ie non-skewed) format on the disk before laying out the MSDOS boot block. Formatting from the SUN may be possible, but since this other format works, I haven't bothered. >Caveats: like IBM formatted disks, there won't be a random serial number >on the disk, so you need to exercise caution putting them in: either keep >them write-protected in the Atari or swap another disk in and out between >any two of them. Also remember that you can only use double-sided regular >density (720K) floppy format), not single-sided (360K) nor high density >(1.44M) formats. The program 'uneekit.zoo' on atari.archive.umich.edu in /atari/diskutils/ is supposed to write a random serial on the disk. Haven't tried it yet, but now that I'm doing Atari<->SUN swaps I suppose I'll run it over some disks. The only other SUN caveat I might add is that if you are not using the floppy presently you made need to fire up the 'fd' driver. I know I had to do that on this SUN I'm on, even though the floppy drive had been installed some months before I started using the machine (I guess everyone else thought it was a quaint aesthetic feature of a SUN Sparc, and not actually meant for use). >Doug Monk (bro@rice.edu) > >Disclaimer: These views are mine, not necessarily my organization's. Anyways, my thanks to those that helped me with this question. I brought home two disks with the Sozobon compiler and some utilities this weekend. Without this I was faced with (ack, arrrrrgh) hours long kermit transfers from our local mainframe. brad@bnr