Rhapsody Developer Release Copyright © 1997 by Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

Rhapsody Developer Release Notes:
Floppy Disk Driver

The Developer Release introduces the first version of the floppy disk driver for Rhapsody. At present time, this driver works only with MFM format high-density double-sided floppy disks (typically 1.44 MB) on PowerPC 8500 machines.

 

New Features

The floppy disk driver confirms to the UNIX device-driver model, namely the block device driver and raw device interface. It provides the standard entry points: OPEN, CLOSE, READ, WRITE, STRATEGY, and IOCTL. The IOCTL call is not fully implemented.

Currently the floppy disk driver can be used as a device that can do standard operations such as

Note: In future releases other floppy disk types, such as GCR 400 KB and 800 KB, will be supported.

 

Using the Floppy Disk Driver

You can use the floppy disk driver almost as you would on any system. Auto-detection works and most file operations work as expected. There are, however, a few problems to be aware of:

  1. Since formatting does not work, you must format disks on a system that is capable of formatting.

  2. disks must be labeled and initialized with the file system. The first time you insert a pre-formatted disks, the system asks you to initialize it. When you select the INITIALIZE option, the driver writes the disk label and runs the newfs command. The floppy's icon then appears on the desktop.

  3. Ejecting of disks currently does not work due to a Workspace problem. To eject a disk, enter this command at a Terminal shell: 
    disk -e /dev/rfd0b
 

Known Problems

The following bugs have been logged for Developer Release:

Reference

1669205

Problem

IOCTL is not fully implemented.

Description

As a result of missing IOCTL features, the Workspace Manager and some other applications do not function properly. For IOCTL the following commands are implemented: DKIOCGLABEL, DKIOCSLABEL, DKIOCEJECT, FDIOCGFORM. The command FDIOCREQ is partially implemented; the subcommands FCCMD_RECAL and FCCMD_FORMAT are implemented simply to return good status values, thereby keeping applications from failing. Recalibration (which is part of every I/O) and Format in response to these two requests is not done.

Workaround

None

Reference

1669205

Problem

Fomatting is not yet supported.

Description

The FDFORM application's request to format the media is serviced without doing formatting.

Workaround

Pre-format the floppy disk (MFM 1.44 MB) on a non-Rhapsody UNIX system.