From - Tue Mar 9 18:51:57 1999 Path: reader1.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.wli.net!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-feed4.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news1.digital.com!pa.dec.com!usenet From: hoffman@xdelta.enet.dec.nospam (Hoff Hoffman) Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: Re: PCDISK and ZIP drives Date: 9 Mar 1999 18:57:11 GMT Organization: Compaq Computer Corporation Lines: 34 Distribution: world Message-ID: <7c3qu7$h2d@usenet.pa.dec.com> References: <199903080637.HAA01137@gate.fim.fgan.de> <7c2aeq$1tdq@r02n01.cac.psu.edu> Reply-To: hoffman@xdelta.zko.dec.nospam NNTP-Posting-Host: xdelta.zko.dec.com X-Newsreader: mxrn 6.18-32 Xref: reader1.news.rcn.net comp.os.vms:224031 In article <7c2aeq$1tdq@r02n01.cac.psu.edu>, Bryan Jensen writes: :In article <199903080637.HAA01137@gate.fim.fgan.de>, : win@gate.fim.fgan.de writes: :> :>we have tried to use a ZIP drive on the AlphaServer1000A, with no success. :>If we try to use them with PCDISK we got the message "drive or disk is not :>DOS formatted" (I am happy, the same message I got from SUN Solaris). So I :>have a question and an idea. The question is, what's wrong with a DOS :>formatted ZIP 100MB disk, so that PCDISK says no? Is it possible to add :>the PCDISK utility to the freeware CD including the source code, so that :>anybody can make some enhancements (e.g. disk size >512MB)? Certainly anything is possible, but there may be other alternatives. (If we don't have alternatives available by the time the next Freeware rolls out, I'll ask about getting the sources to PCDISK added...) :I believe the enhancements are non-trivial on account of the various :MicroSloth filesystems (FAT 12, FAT 16, FAT 32). The filesystem used :by PCDISK and PCX doesn't work above a few megabytes. FAT12 is used on disks up to 20740 blocks, with FAT16 used from that point upwards. Larger disks on recent Microsoft releases will also use FAT32. FAT16 and FAT32 also add partitions, something which OpenVMS does not currently directly support. All three FAT systems are fairly similar, but each is enough different that any tool will require rework to use one of the other formats. -------------------------- pure personal opinion --------------------------- Hoff (Stephen) Hoffman OpenVMS Engineering hoffman#xdelta.zko.dec.com