[Coco] Another drive question

[John E. Malmberg]

David wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 12:10:01AM -0500, John E. Malmberg wrote:
>  
> 
>>I have the same issue with OpenVMS, the floppy device driver does not 
>>have an API where I can set the sector size.  But if the COCO could 
>>produce a 512 byte sectored floppy, I could read it on any of my systems.
> 
> 
> Do you have, or can you get, the "fdutils" package?  If not prepackaged
> for OpenVMS, you should be able to compile the source.  It allows you to
> access about any format you wish.

Neither Windows 2000, Windows XP, or OpenVMS Alpha provide the API at 
the device driver needed for fdutils to work.

The device drivers for those platforms would need to be modified in 
order for a utility like fdutils to operate.  While I can get the source 
to the OpenVMS Alpha floppy driver, I can not to the others.


The fdutils package could probably be built as a DOS 2.x through 6.x 
application and run on Windows 95/98 and possibly Windows NT 3.5 through 
4.0.  But we already have working solutions for those.


I feel it would be an easier and more productive excersize for the COCO 
to be able to read/write a 512 byte sector floppy or other removable 
media for long term file interchange.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
Personal Opinion Only