Talk:ND floppy disks

As for reading Sintran file systems copied off floppy disks, I have written a tool to do that. I will update the page later with a link etc. TArntsen 18:58, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Did this update (with the link to the tool) ever happen? Torfinn 22:38, 30 August 2011 (CEST)

Well, the tool exists and is GPL and works on every *nix (probably), but I haven't posted it anywhere yet (Roger got a copy but that's all). Will do somethinga about it soon. If you need it early e.g. for that Satellite image), email me and I'll dig up a copy for you. Rather busy at work right now. --TArntsen 10:43, 31 August 2011 (CEST)

Me too! Although, it is in a serious hardcoded mess right now but I will clean it up. As the floppy disks uses the same layout as a full Sintran system my code should be able to extract all files from any disk image. Gandalf 11:42, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Same here, it supports subindexed files for example, which isn't often seen on floppies (as that is only used for files above 1MB in size). I have tested the tool with floppies with contiguous files (most ND floppies) and indexed files. Now if I could just find a CCT drive so that I could copy off one of my actual disc images :-) TArntsen 12:05, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Use this fresh one I found in my satellite a couple of days ago. Image directory --Gandalf 12:35, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The link seems broken now (ok, it has been a couple of years). Can it be fixed? Torfinn 00:55, 30 August 2011 (CEST)

He's got a disk crash. I'll send you a private msg for a temporary copy. --TArntsen 10:12, 30 August 2011 (CEST)

Thanks for sharing! I already found a problem in my user file handling. TArntsen 14:29, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Now fixed! :-) Done TArntsen 15:04, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Adding references

I didn't get a new reference added correctly. Is it possible to use <ref>{{ND-Doc|nn.yy}}</ref>
at all? In this case it was a doc not in the document list. So I added it (60.250), which didn't help,
and I tried adding it manually in Refereces just like the three others. Didn't work. So I've got two
questions really.. first, the one about doc refs inside <ref> tags, and secondly if there's more to
adding documents to the document page in order to get the {{ND-Doc} thingy to work.. 

TArntsen 08:57, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

To get the ND-doc thingy to work you have to enter the document number into the ND-doc-lookup template too. I've been a bit lazy lately and haven't added new documents to the lookup table yet. I'll go through the list of known documents when I have finished the inventory of my library. It's all in a number of boxes stuffed in a room I let in a basement. It will probably be a work for some cold winter days. :-)

• Template:ND-doc
• Template:ND-doc-lookup

I've fixed the current reference. Done Gandalf 12:17, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to write a ND floppy on a Linux machine?

If I have a Linux machine with a 5.25 inch floppy drive, can I write a ND-format floppy with it? Torfinn 00:59, 30 August 2011 (CEST)

Presumably yes. I have not tried this (for the obvious reason that I don't have an ND computer anymore..), but by using 'setfdprpm' as described, and 'dd' to write in the other direction, it should in prinicple work. The problem may be to format the floppy if you don't already have a floppy formatted correctly. But if you want to write an ND floppy it must be because you have an ND to read it (with a correct drive), and then the floppy can be formatted there first. And in any case, if you can connect an 5.25" floppy to an ND computer then it is always possible to write any PC format to the floppy on a PC, read it on the ND (with low-level commands), and write it back in a format SINTRAN likes. In short, as soon as you have a 5.25" floppy drive connected to an ND computer you're all set.. --TArntsen 10:09, 30 August 2011 (CEST)

Well, I now have a ND-100/CX with a 5.25 inch floppy. The hard drive is (currently) not booting Sintran, and I don't have any 5.25 inch ND floppies. I would want to make one with DISC-TEMA on it, so I could test the hard drive. How do I proceed? --Torfinn 21:46, 23 September 2011 (CEST)

Reading and writing floppy images on a FreeBSD machine

I used a machine which already had a 5.25 inch floppy drive in addition to the 3.5 inch floppy drive. It runs a quite old version of FreeBSD:

# uname -a
FreeBSD kg-t2.kg4.no 8.2-STABLE FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE #1: Mon Sep 26 13:09:55 CEST 2011
    root@kg-t2.kg4.no:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

Using fdcontrol to check the settings (substitute /dev/fd1 with the name of your floppy drive, /dev/fd0 for example)

# fdcontrol -vF /dev/fd1
/dev/fd1: 1200 KB media type
   Format:        15,512,0xff,0x1b,80,500,2,0x54,1,0,+mfm,+auto
   Sector size:    512
   Sectors/track:    15
   Heads/cylinder:    2
   Cylinders/disk:    80
   Transfer rate:    500 kbps
   Sector gap:    27
   Format gap:    84
   Interleave:    1
   Side offset:    0
   Flags        <MFM,AUTO>

Change format to the correct format for ND floppies:

# fdcontrol -f 1232 /dev/fd1

and verify that the format changed:

# fdcontrol -vF /dev/fd1
/dev/fd1: 1232 KB media type
   Format:        8,1024,0xff,0x35,77,500,2,0x74,1,0,+mfm
   Sector size:    1024
   Sectors/track:    8
   Heads/cylinder:    2
   Cylinders/disk:    77
   Transfer rate:    500 kbps
   Sector gap:    53
   Format gap:    116
   Interleave:    1
   Side offset:    0
   Flags        <MFM>

Read an image:

$ dd if=/dev/fd1 of=./test.image bs=1024
1232+0 records in
1232+0 records out
1261568 bytes transferred in 230.765575 secs (5467 bytes/sec)

Write an image:

$ dd if=/home/tingo/dl/nd/floppies/image15 of=/dev/fd1 bs=1024
1232+0 records in
1232+0 records out
1261568 bytes transferred in 230.693638 secs (5469 bytes/sec)

I have tested that the images I have read are working, but not the written ones (because I currently don't have a ND machine with a working 5.25 inch floppy drive). Torfinn 12:31, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Reading single-sided floppies with a "PC" with a normal 5.25 inch, 1.2 Mbyte floppy drive?

Is it possible to read ND single-sided formatted floppies (presumably format 0b) on a FreeBSD machine with a normal 5.25 inch floppy drive? I have successfully read ND double-sided formatted floppies (format 17b) on the same machine. So far, I have been unable to read ND single-sided format floppies. This could be because I haven't figured out the correct settings, because the floppies in question are bad or with errors, or because the floppy controller and / or drive in the PC can't deal with that format. --Torfinn (talk) 20:47, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

It should in principle be possible to read single-sided floppies (but depending on your controller you may be unable to read 128-byte sectors. And I think some of the single-density formats may be using FM instead of MFM, which could sometimes be an issue). But I'm unaware of ND using anything else than format 17b ("high density") for 5.25 inch floppies - are you sure? Double sided 5.25" floppies were in practice mainstream as early as 1982 (due to the IBM PC), and ND started using 5.25 inch floppies much later as far as I know. --TArntsen (talk) 12:18, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

It is hard to be sure when I can't read the floppies. But look at the information available. For example ND-10758B. If you look at the images of the floppy labels, they have the letter "S" as the last character of the (printed) directory name. As opposed to the floppies I have been able to read, which (mostly) has the letter "D" as the last character of the directory name. Also if you look at the PD / PI sheet(s), the contain a directory listing of the floppies. The floppies with the "S" in the last character of the directory name is listed as a capacity "out of 148 pages", which is aligned with the 8" format, format 0b description of ND floppy disks. Compare this to for example ND-210193C which shows 610 pages in PI/PD and 611 pages from the ndfs tool for an image where the directory name ends with "D". --Torfinn (talk) 16:57, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. It looks like ND sometimes just transfered their old 8"-based images to 5 1/4". The question is if they did this with also actually formatting the smaller floppy to the original 8" format (type 0) as well, or just made a smaller filesystem on a 17b-formatted floppy. As seen from the labels these are actually HD (1.2MB) media. If they used type 0 then I fear there will be a problem - not with the single side, but I believey the single density format is using FM encoding and not MFM. Very few FDC chips can handle FM anymore. My 'tweener PC has an Intel 82077 FDC, but it's a newer revision and can't read FM (the original really old ones could). At least my chip can read 128byte sectors (not a given either), but that wouldn't help in this case. Time to check out the floppy drive in my Satellite.. (Update: I found two ND floppies (PED for ND-500) that, altough they don't have a label ID with -D or -S, have '148 pages' in the PD sheet. They are unreadable. They have two dates: 881115 and 840323. These could be original 8" floppy images from 1984 re-written on 5 1/4" media in 1988. Definitely time to fire up the Satellite. ) --TArntsen (talk) 15:23, 22 March 2018 (UTC)