File copying from OS-9 to FAT/ext2 media

[Martin Gregorie]

I need to access some data from Linux that's currently on .lzh archives
on OS-9 formatted 3.5" floppies. I appreciate knowing if:

- there is any Linux software that can transfer the archived data to
disk/floppy/flash media in either FAT or ext2/3/4 format. It needs
run on my Linux box (RedHat Fedora 16/17).

- anybody (preferably in the UK) that would be able to do the transfer
for me.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

[Martin Gregorie]

On Sat, 06 Oct 2012 19:54:50 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:

> I need to access some data from Linux that's currently on .lzh archives
> on OS-9 formatted 3.5" floppies. I appreciate knowing if:
>
> - there is any Linux software that can transfer the archived data to
> disk/floppy/flash media in either FAT or ext2/3/4 format. It needs run
> on my Linux box (RedHat Fedora 16/17).
>
> - anybody (preferably in the UK) that would be able to do the transfer
> for me.

Following up for anybody else in the same situation:

- I used setfdprm (part of the fdutils package) to set the device
parameters in the floppy driver: I set:

HD sect=34 ssize=256 head=2 cyl=80 tracksize=8704 dtr=0 zerobased

zerobased is vital because all the other formats that are readable
by the Linux floppy driver, floppy.ko, number sectors from 1, but
all RBF devices number them from zero.

- once this was set and checked with getfdprm the command:

dd ibs=256 if=/dev/fdn of=imagefilename

copied the entire floppy into a binary image file (sort of ISO image
equivalent. This could then be mounted and accessed by the os9exec
emulator.

This approach works well and can be easily automated with a small shell
script.

Beware: The following applies to fdutils 5.5

fdutils documentation is a poorly organised and internally
inconsistent info file, so its difficult to read.

fdutils is no longer part of the Fedora distro: you need to
download and compile it. fdmount doesn't compile easily but
you don't need it. Just comment it out in the Makefile

The disk format library, a file called mediaprm wasn't installed
by make install so I manually put it in /usr/local/etc

In some places (in source and mediaprm) the "zero based" parameter
is spelt 'zerobased' and in other places it is 'zero-based'.
Do a search and destroy in the source and mediaprm files to
make it consistent before you compile the package. I used
'zerobased'.

All that said, once I'd got it compiled and installed it worked without a
fault in Fedora 16, which uses kernel 3.4