Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!haven!udel!mmdf
From: Peter_Van_Epp@cc.sfu.ca
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: tar to raw floppy (Was: Re: disk geometry.)
Message-ID: <8444@nigel.udel.EDU>
Date: 17 Jan 90 02:59:21 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 16

Since there seems to be a fair amount of interest on the subject of the care 
and feeding of floppies I'll make a last comment, on consideration the change
the boot block idea is a bad one it breaks too many things (I thought of the 
offset one sector trick, but how do you write a boot disk to say nothing of
reading old tar disks!). It seems to me the solution is to specify what type
of floppies your system contains (or at least be able to!) on the boot menu.
To this end my recently posted FSCK mods have the code to do this installed
but ifdefed out. Paul Allen is looking at floppy.c and I am going to leave
him to it and proceed with something else. Paul, one further thought on the
defined values in boot.h: the value being the number of tracks for the drive
would make a lot more sense (no translate table in floppy.c for one!) than 
the current values of 1 and 2. Specifying the drive on the boot menu also
allows any of you with strange drives (there have been reports of an 80
track 720k 5.25 inch drive for instance, or the old 8 inch floppies) to 
define a type in boot.h and modify floppy.c to deal with them.
Peter Van Epp