Newsgroups: comp.archives
Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ox.com!emv
From: brad@bcars241.bnr.ca (Brad Shapcott)
Subject: [comp.sys.atari.st.tech] Re: MSDOS & SUNSparc1
Message-ID: <1991Mar6.014912.16244@ox.com>
Followup-To: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Sender: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Reply-To: brad@bcars362.UUCP (Brad Shapcott)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ltd., Ottawa, CANADA
References: <1991Feb27.132904.748@bigsur.uucp> <11000@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <1991Mar2.045404.2229@rice.edu> <1991Mar4.143741.9214@bigsur.uucp>
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1991 01:49:12 GMT
Approved: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
X-Original-Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech

Archive-name: hardware/floppies/uneekit/1991-03-04
Archive: atari.archive.umich.edu:/atari/diskutils/uneekit.zoo [141.211.164.8]
Original-posting-by: brad@bcars241.bnr.ca (Brad Shapcott)
Original-subject: Re: MSDOS & SUNSparc1
Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)

In article <1991Mar2.045404.2229@rice.edu> bro@eunomia.rice.edu (Douglas Monk) writes:
>
>SUN->PC will also work fine. The problem with the earlier versions of mtools
>was that by default, it only wrote one copy of the FAT, and Ataris depend on
>the second copy. IBMs work OK with only the one FAT for some reason.
>
>I had the problem, and this is indeed the fix, except the flag is DUP_FAT.
>As someone else pointed out, a later MTOOLS version fixed this problem,
>but I have had trouble with our site's installation of it, so I still use
>my own copy (which *I* support :-).

I ftp'ed MTOOLS 2.0.3 (originally trying 129.229.1.101, which gave me 
truncated files three times, so I think the files there are messed -- I
eventually got them from 129.217.64.63 where they were in comp/msdos/mtools).
The patches that were in the directory seem to be unecessary, as they are 
already applied to the sources there.  Anyways, I think the only thing I did
was add "#define SPARC 1" to devices.c (this would change if you were on a
different machine) and compiled.  The disks I used were Atari ST formatted
with a MSDOS boot sector written over with DCFormat 3.0 (this program will
also do an 2-9-80 normal (ie non-skewed) format on the disk before laying out
the MSDOS boot block.  Formatting from the SUN may be possible, but since this
other format works, I haven't bothered.

>Caveats: like IBM formatted disks, there won't be a random serial number
>on the disk, so you need to exercise caution putting them in: either keep
>them write-protected in the Atari or swap another disk in and out between
>any two of them. Also remember that you can only use double-sided regular
>density (720K) floppy format), not single-sided (360K) nor high density
>(1.44M) formats.

The program 'uneekit.zoo' on atari.archive.umich.edu in /atari/diskutils/ is
supposed to write a random serial on the disk.  Haven't tried it yet, but now
that I'm doing Atari<->SUN swaps I suppose I'll run it over some disks.

The only other SUN caveat I might add is that if you are not using the floppy
presently you made need to fire up the 'fd' driver.  I know I had to do that
on this SUN I'm on, even though the floppy drive had been installed some months
before I started using the machine (I guess everyone else thought it was a
quaint aesthetic feature of a SUN Sparc, and not actually meant for use).


>Doug Monk (bro@rice.edu)
>
>Disclaimer: These views are mine, not necessarily my organization's.


Anyways, my thanks to those that helped me with this question.  I brought home 
two disks with the Sozobon compiler and some utilities this weekend.  Without
this I was faced with (ack, arrrrrgh) hours long kermit transfers from our
local mainframe.

brad@bnr