How to read DOS floppy in cp/m? Is it possible at all?

[Laszlo Sz.]

Hi,

I am able to read the floppy sectors (IBM 720k 5.25" DD disk). However I was not able to figure out, how to access the DOS file system. I use RomWBW  dev branch. Any kind of help and suggestion would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Laszlo
p.s. Floppy access only with RomWBW.

[Douglas Miller]

There is no way to "mount" a DOS floppy in CP/M. CP/M supports only one filesystem. However, one could write a program to read DOS floppy sectors and interpret them (as a FAT filesystem), much the way that cpmtools does that for the CP/M filesystem, giving one a basic file import/export capability. I'm not aware of anyone having written such a program, though.

[joseluis...@gmail.com]

Hi Laszlo, the FAT.COM program included with ROMWBW handles FAT partitions in HDDs, CFs and CF Cards. Didn’t test it with Floppies but I think it should work, my floppy drive isn’t working properly at the moment as it only responds to FDU commands.

Regrds, JL

[Tony Nicholson]

On Sunday, May 14, 2023 at 6:40:47 PM UTC+10 Laszlo Sz. wrote:

I am able to read the floppy sectors (IBM 720k 5.25" DD disk). However I was not able to figure out, how to access the DOS file system. I use RomWBW  dev branch. Any kind of help and suggestion would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Laszlo

You may be able to adapt a program I wrote in TurboPascal that can transfer files

between CP/M-Plus and a 1.2MB MS-DOS formatted 5.25" HD disk.  It relies on the

BIOS disk routines being able to detect and access the raw 512-byte sectors.

I've uploaded it (along with CP/M Plus BIOS sources for a Ferguson BigBoard-II

computer) to GitHub at -

https://github.com/agn453/BIGBOARD-II

Tony