🚀 go-pugleaf

rawn@manduca.neurobio.arizona.edu (Rawn Shah) writes:


>    One problem we came across immediately is that even if the drives were
>compatible (same disk size & conforming to ISO), the actual file system on 
>the disk as saved by the driver software differs; on the Sun its a SunOS 
>file system and on the DOS-based 486, it uses the FAT tables and such.
>So data stored on a disk on the DOS system cannot be read by the MO drive
>on the Sun and vice versa.

>    I had the idea that I might stick a DOS emulator on the Sun and have
>it read the disks in DOS format. BUT as far as I know the DOS emulator
>I looked up (SoftPC for SunOS 4) does not have any drivers for r/w optical
>drives and even if I did NFS-mount the drive (the other option given by
>SoftPC) the actual file format is still SunOS and so the disks wouldn't
>be readable by the DOS machine.

>    As far as I know so far there are no compatibility measures on such
>kinds of drives. Now there're phase change r/w optical drives but I still
>haven't heard of any compatibility between systems either.

I have two solutions for you. One is hacking the mtools a bit. The mtools
implement the DOS file system portably.

The other is using FILEdriver from OSS. This is a WORM filesystem that
has been implemented on DOS, Novell, and SunOS. Of course the file system
has the same structure on all three platforms; even the code derives from
a common source.

The drawback is that while you can run a WORM filesystem on any random
access media, it will assume WORM behaviour: any sector can be written
at most one time. This seems to be OK with your application, though.
Of course, for MOs FILEdriver offers a "wipe" utility to erase the disk.

If you are interested in FILEdriver, call OSS:

	Optical Software Solutions, Inc.
	Keith Ragsdale
	1956 Marion Court
	Lafayette, CA 94549
	Tel (510) 256-1066
	FAX (510) 256-6461
	Email uunet!ossi.com!ossie!keith
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