Talk:ND floppy disks
Revision as of 12:31, 7 August 2013 by Tingo (talk | contribs) (→Reading and writing floppy images on a FreeBSD machine: new section)
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)
- Did this update (with the link to the tool) ever happen? Torfinn 22:38, 30 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)
- 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)
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. :-)
- I've fixed the current reference.
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)