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Date: Tue, 28 Jun 94 09:35:02 -0700
From: alex@guava.UCSD.EDU (Alex Levine)
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Subject: Re: Formatting Disks
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Actually, folks, it IS possible to format a high-density macintosh disk on a
PC, with or without Executor. Of course, such disks can then be written with
Executor, so the topic is of immediate relevance here. Furthermore, no
commercial software is required: the task may be performed with a simple
freeware utility.
RAWRITE.EXE is a DOS program for writing raw disk image files to floppy disks.
It was written for the purpose of allowing people to create their own linux
boot diskettes before installing linux on their hard disks. Since it takes raw
disk files as its input, it will work with the image of ANY disk, including
mac-or DOS-formatted disks. Find it at any of numerous ftp sites.
Now, once you have a "standard" image file for a mac-formatted disk, you can
use rawrite to crank out valid, mac-compliant copies of it indefinitely. The
trick, if there is a trick, is to acquire the appropriate disk file in the
first place, but fortunately you only have to perform this once. Here, to my
knowledge, the only thing to do is to hunt for a UNIX machine that reads high
density floppies. The Macintosh DiskCopy program can create disk images, but
they appear to be incompatible with rawrite. On a UNIX system, insert the
macintosh floppy of your choice, and issue a command like the following:
dd if=/dev/rfd0b of=macfile bs=16k
The precise syntax depends on which UNIX system you're using, and which device
your floppy drive is associated with. I used the above on my NEXTSTEP system,
with excellent results, and I gather the command is basically the same on linux
and SUN boxes.
Anyway, this command creates a file called "macfile." That's your disk image,
ready for use with rawrite. Transfer it over to your DOS box by the method of
your choice, grab rawrite.exe from the archives, and you're in business.
Not everybody has access to a UNIX station. If there's interest, maybe our
friends at ARDI will put rawrite.exe and an appropriate disk image on their ftp
