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SUMMARY: floppy drive on personal decstation


On Mon, 24 Jan 1994, I wrote:

> we have a few personal DECstations with 3.5" floppy drives that we would like
> to use with MSDos type disks.  The person before me didn't know how; however,
> there is some software called "mtools" that I found that seems like it will d
o
> the trick.
> 
> will mtools work for the personal DECstation (running 4.2a)?

I received 15 total responses, several before I received a copy of my own
message from the exploder!  Pretty much everyone said "yes, mtools is it,
we use it, no problems".  I got the latest version from (I think)
gatekeeper.dec.com (it's version 2.0 with AIX additions, dated August 1992.
The Makefile had one error -- the "make install" tried to issue the "gln"
command -- I changed that to "ln" and everything was fine.
Apparently the devices already existed for the machine in question, but I
did need to repermit them so that everyone could rw them.  One other thing
that needed to be done before the make was to put the device type in
devices.c.  I'll put that at the end of the message for anyone that's
interested.

Thanks very much for the quick, accurate, and helpful responses I got!
  ka
--
  Kathy Madison                      SysAdmin, Department of Statistics
  klm@xxxxxxxxx                 College of LS&A, University of Michigan

Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
--

Other respondents were:

Stuart Cohnen <cohnen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Mike O'Connor <mjo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Steve Wright - Sys Adm <wright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
anthony baxter <anthony@xxxxxxxxxx>
Joshua Lieberman <josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Bernhard.Schneck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
"E. Loren Buhle, Jr." <BUHLE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Alan Oborne <OBORNE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Tom De Pauw <tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
grosen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Pierre Didierjean <cisitm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Here's the one detailed response I got about this:

From:    Huw Davies <cchd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Certainly does. I've had it on lucifer (my DECstation-5000/20) and hades
(my SE/30 running A/UX) for a long while. The only difficulty is that you
have to configure mtools and tell it about what your floppy disk can do.
here is the code I added to devices.c

- --- cut here ---
#ifdef AUX
struct device devices[] = {
  {'A', "/dev/rfd/d0m1440w", 0L, 12, 0, (int(*) ()) 0, 80, 2, 18},
  {'B', "/dev/rfd/d0m720w", 0L, 12, 0, (int(*) ()) 0, 80, 2, 9},
  {'C', "/dev/rfd/d0m800w", 0L, 12, 0, (int(*) ()) 0, 80, 2, 10}
};
#endif

#ifdef ULTRIX
struct device devices[] = {
  {'A', "/dev/fd0a", 0L, 12, 0, (int(*) ()) 0, 80, 2, 18},
  {'B', "/dev/fd0b", 0L, 12, 0, (int(*) ()) 0, 80, 2, 9},
  {'C', "/dev/fd0c", 0L, 12, 0, (int(*) ()) 0, 80, 2, 10}
};
#endif

- --- cut here ---

> the personal DECstations (5000/25) have little "2.88"s written on
> the floppy drives -- does that mean i should assume they are 1.44M
> for the purposes of MSDos?

Despite the various drives I specified in the devices.c file, I can only
get A: to work (1.44Mb).

Hope this helps.

  Huw Davies           | Huw.Davies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Computing Services   | Phone: +61 3 479 1500   Fax: +61 3 479 1999
  La Trobe University  | I own an Alfa to keep me poor in a monetary
  Melbourne Australia  | sense, but rich in so many other ways