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- Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!destroyer!ncar!noao!amethyst!organpipe.uug.arizona.edu!news
- From: rawn@manduca.neurobio.arizona.edu (Rawn Shah)
- Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage
- Subject: R/W Optical Drive file system compatibility
- Message-ID: <1992Sep4.001905.1064@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
- Date: 4 Sep 92 00:19:05 GMT
- Sender: news@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu
- Organization: University of Arizona UNIX Users Group
- Lines: 33
-
-
- We recently were thinking of solutions for large storage capabilities
- for our Confocal Microscope system. We presntly have one Sun station with
- a magneto-optical r/w drive on it where we store our data. The data is
- collected on a 486 over at the microscope and then FTP'd over to the
- Sun's MO drive.
- When I was looking to get a new MO system I thought of getting one for
- the PC instead and have them write the data directly to this drive at the
- 486 station.
-
- 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.
-
- If anyone has any suggestions, they would be very welcome.
-
- Rawn Shah
- Neurobionetmgr, ARLDN, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721
- rawn@neurobio.arizona.edu
-