Prev: What am I doing wrong ?
Next: GNOME Display Manager gdm 2.30 functionality
From: The Natural Philosopher on 29 Jun 2010 06:26
Mark Hobley wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:39:22 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> why not simply write one?
>
> I used to write disk formatting routines back in the days of assembly
> language and MSDOS, but I used to use the BIOS services to format the
> disk sectors. I am still learning to program in Linux, and I am not a
> proficient C programmer (I only know BASIC and assembly language), so I
> am not sure of the complexity of formatting a laser servo diskette.
>
> Is there a system call that does the low level formatting of the
> diskettes?
>
> I could knock up a for next loop around the format system call for each
> of the sector numbers, if that is all that is involved.
>
> (The driver is complete isn't it, and does have formatting capability?)
>
> I don't need to populate the sectors with any data. I will just use mkfs
> for that.
>

OK, I think that what is needed is a driver for the laser diskette: that
is something that is essentially bios level in your parlance, and knows
about the hardware etc. enough to tell it to write a sector with data.

Then the standard Linux routines can handle read write and filesystem
stuff: they will simply call your driver.

As far as I can tell, a laser diskette is a standard floppy drive done
better.

Ergo the place to start would be the standard floppy drive source code.


But I cant really find much on what a laser diskette actually is, and
why anyone these days would want to write to one, since its obsolete
technology, all you really want is to read old ones and get the data
onto something better?


Finally, if you have DOS or WINDOWS drivers, and that's all you want to
do, use Virtual Box to set up a DOS environment and read them that way?


> Mark.
>
From: Mark Hobley on 29 Jun 2010 07:45
On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:26:22 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> OK, I think that what is needed is a driver for the laser diskette: that
> is something that is essentially bios level in your parlance, and knows
> about the hardware etc. enough to tell it to write a sector with data.

There is already a driver for LS120, but there is no documentation on how
to format the disks. I need to perform a low level surface format.

> As far as I can tell, a laser diskette is a standard floppy drive done
> better.

The LS120 attaches to the IDE interface, and supports disks with a
capacity of up to 120MB.

> But I cant really find much on what a laser diskette actually is, and
> why anyone these days would want to write to one, since its obsolete
> technology, all you really want is to read old ones and get the data
> onto something better?

I spent several hundred pounds on LS120 drives and disks, and I want to
make the most of this investment. I have approximately 20 of these
drives, and some of the disks need reformatting.

> Finally, if you have DOS or WINDOWS drivers, and that's all you want to
> do, use Virtual Box to set up a DOS environment and read them that way?

Nahh. I don't want to do this. I am using these disks from Linux. I
currently use cpio, or heirloom tar (due to a bug in GNU tar) to write to
these disks.

Mark.

--
/local/home/mark/.Signature

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news(a)netfront.net ---
From: The Natural Philosopher on 29 Jun 2010 07:52
Mark Hobley wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:26:22 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> OK, I think that what is needed is a driver for the laser diskette: that
>> is something that is essentially bios level in your parlance, and knows
>> about the hardware etc. enough to tell it to write a sector with data.
>
> There is already a driver for LS120, but there is no documentation on how
> to format the disks. I need to perform a low level surface format.
>
>> As far as I can tell, a laser diskette is a standard floppy drive done
>> better.
>
> The LS120 attaches to the IDE interface, and supports disks with a
> capacity of up to 120MB.
>
>> But I cant really find much on what a laser diskette actually is, and
>> why anyone these days would want to write to one, since its obsolete
>> technology, all you really want is to read old ones and get the data
>> onto something better?
>
> I spent several hundred pounds on LS120 drives and disks, and I want to
> make the most of this investment. I have approximately 20 of these
> drives, and some of the disks need reformatting.
>
>> Finally, if you have DOS or WINDOWS drivers, and that's all you want to
>> do, use Virtual Box to set up a DOS environment and read them that way?
>
> Nahh. I don't want to do this. I am using these disks from Linux. I
> currently use cpio, or heirloom tar (due to a bug in GNU tar) to write to
> these disks.
>
> Mark.
>
read this first

http://linux.die.net/man/8/floppy

It looks like the tools already exist to format them, but it is
inadvisable to do so.

If you have the disks that may be formatted, then the floppy program
looks like it will do it.
From: Mark Hobley on 30 Jun 2010 05:32
On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:52:04 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> read this first
>
> http://linux.die.net/man/8/floppy
>
> It looks like the tools already exist to format them, but it is
> inadvisable to do so.

Right. I have formatted these successfully before (from MSDOS), and I
think that the utility that I used came from one of the drive
manufacturers, but I can't remember the details, and I cannot find the
program that I used to use. I know that it is possible to format these
disks.

> If you have the disks that may be formatted, then the floppy program
> looks like it will do it.

The notes you have quoted say "Low-level formatting will ruin them
permanently."

I know that if you format an LS120 as a 1.44MB floppy it will become
ruined, but I reckon as long as the format program attempts to formats
the disk at the full 120MB, it should work.

Does the floppy program format at 120MB, or is the reason that it is
damaging disks is due to it formatting them with the wrong capacity?

Has anyone managed to successfully format laser servo disks on Linux?

What is the kernel patch that I need to apply? Do I still need to do
this, or has the patch now been implemented into the kernel?

I am currently using a binary based distribution (Debian). If I do need
to apply a patch, can I do this from Debian, or will I need to scratch
build the system from source code?

Mark.

--
/local/home/mark/.Signature

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news(a)netfront.net ---
From: The Natural Philosopher on 30 Jun 2010 08:12
Mark Hobley wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:52:04 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> read this first
>>
>> http://linux.die.net/man/8/floppy
>>
>> It looks like the tools already exist to format them, but it is
>> inadvisable to do so.
>
> Right. I have formatted these successfully before (from MSDOS), and I
> think that the utility that I used came from one of the drive
> manufacturers, but I can't remember the details, and I cannot find the
> program that I used to use. I know that it is possible to format these
> disks.
>
>> If you have the disks that may be formatted, then the floppy program
>> looks like it will do it.
>
> The notes you have quoted say "Low-level formatting will ruin them
> permanently."

Well lots of thongs have health warnings like that on them. You can buy
p reformatted LS120s so its a moot point as to why you want to bother
formatting what you have already. Either the format ptgram will work, or
te disks will stay unuseable. *shrug* no brainer I'd say.

>
> I know that if you format an LS120 as a 1.44MB floppy it will become
> ruined, but I reckon as long as the format program attempts to formats
> the disk at the full 120MB, it should work.
>
> Does the floppy program format at 120MB, or is the reason that it is
> damaging disks is due to it formatting them with the wrong capacity?
>

It will if you give it the correct parameters and the drive accepts
those parameters format at whatever density you tell it to.


> Has anyone managed to successfully format laser servo disks on Linux?
>

Who really cares about laser diskettes anyway? they have been utterly
replaced first by XIP drives, then my writeable DVD media and finally by
USB flash sticks.

> What is the kernel patch that I need to apply? Do I still need to do
> this, or has the patch now been implemented into the kernel?
>

It klooks like all you need is floppy support, and the drive should vbe
reconfised.


> I am currently using a binary based distribution (Debian). If I do need
> to apply a patch, can I do this from Debian, or will I need to scratch
> build the system from source code?
>

I think that if the drive exists

#apt-get install fdutils

is what you start with.


Then try the superformat package and see what happens.



> Mark.
>
First  |  Prev  |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3
Prev: What am I doing wrong ?
Next: GNOME Display Manager gdm 2.30 functionality