Setfdprm option to read all of one side, then all of another? (ie "tracks before heads")
Hello all! I'm looking for easier ways of mounting floppies directly from old computers - setfdprm is great for most of them, but it does not seem to offer an option to read the entire of one side of a disk, then the entire of the other side, rather than its current behaviour, read one track from the first side, then one track from the second side, etc. This is useful for the ADFS 'L' format as used on the later Acorn BBC Micros, as detailed here: http://www.adsb.co.uk/bbc/linux/ Is it possible that such an option may be added in the future? Or does the problem lie in kernel behaviour? If the latter, who should I contact to request a feature there? Thanks! Muzer.
On 27/11/09 21:29, Murray Colpman wrote:
Hello all! I'm looking for easier ways of mounting floppies directly from old computers - setfdprm is great for most of them, but it does not seem to offer an option to read the entire of one side of a disk, then the entire of the other side, rather than its current behaviour, read one track from the first side, then one track from the second side, etc. This is useful for the ADFS 'L' format as used on the later Acorn BBC Micros, as detailed here: http://www.adsb.co.uk/bbc/linux/
Is it possible that such an option may be added in the future? Or does the problem lie in kernel behaviour? If the latter, who should I contact to request a feature there?
The kernel is indeed the entity that maps linear addresses to the exact sector (header + physical location) on disk. However, due to other priorities I'll probably not get around to implementing this within the next couple of months. Sorry for this. But you might still be able to read these disks by setting them up with a "normal" format (that reads from each head alternatively, all other parameters being as BBC expects them), and then use an application to put them into the correct order (could even be a simple perl script to process the image)
Thanks!
Muzer.
Regards, Alain
participants (2)
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Alain Knaff -
Murray Colpman