Hi All,
I hope someone more knowledgeable than me can help!
I've searched the forum, but can't find exactly what i'm looking to achieve documented.
Basically I am trying to make a backup copy of my NeXT OS boot floppy that came with the CD.
I thought there would be some simple app in the OS I can use but cant seem to find anything, disk builder looked promising, but seems more suited to provisioning magneto optical drives and/or HDDs.
I tried using the command line as well, using:
dd if=/dev/fd0a of=/tmp/floppy.copy bs=9k
and to copy to the new disk
dd of=/dev/fd0 if=/tmp/floppy.copy bs=9k
The drive whirs and clicks as floppies do, and then the file appears in /tmp /floppy.copy
And writing back it does the same, however the disk appears unaltered, and will not work as a boot floppy?
I can only see the upgrade.app on the floppy beforehand, but I assume there are some hidden files etc that make it bootable, which is what lead me to dd as i know it does 1:1 copies.
This leads me to think i am doing something wrong, so any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
In my view what you did should work. Have you tried it without the bs argument?
Hi bobo68,
Nope not yet, i'll give it a bash now and see if it works.
Hiya,
Unfortunately that didn't seem to work either?
I'm fairly confident the drive can read and write as I can boot from it, and format disks.
Any suggestions appreciated.
I believe you need to use the raw disk device, not the file disk.
/dev/rfd0a
See the following link for an example
http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/next/hardware/boot_floppies/boot_floppies.html
Unless it's different from the unusual install floppy that came with the CD kits, that disk is already archived online.
Quote from: "wa2flq"I believe you need to use the raw disk device, not the file disk.
/dev/rfd0a
Absolutely, I missed that detail.
Okie dokie,
I managed to get it done, but not with any of the disks from the site.
To cut a long story short, I built an XP box to run the rawrite software (managed to get the GUI version) made an image of my original disk, then wrote it back to a blank, I tested booting the system from it, and it will happily load the setup program for NS3.3 and OS4.2, so i'm happy.
I did also try the images on the website and it also worked with those :)
Good link if anyone needs to do the same simply from a windows box with a floppy drive.