Hi, i'm a relative noob, but I was able to get NeXTstep installed on my black hardware and things are going smoothly in that regard. I updated the machine with y2k patches, etc, I'm feeling pretty good about things. But I want to install some floppy disk images on my color slab.
I have the .img files and I have a working floppy. I inserted mac floppy and it mounts in the File Viewer. How do I go about copying the image to the floppy?
I saw in a long ago thread:
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=3463.msg19780#msg19780dd if=name.img of=/dev/fd0a is the way to go. I try that, and keep getting "cannot created /dev/fd0a" response in terminal. /rfd0a is same result. Is there another way to access the floppy via terminal?
thanks
-terry
What operating system are you using on the system you're using to write to the physical disks?
-- edit --
Also, by 'mac floppy'... do you mean 1.44MB high density 3.5-inch disk with an external USB floppy drive hooked up to a Mac?
I ask because 'mac floppy' to me means an 800KB DS-DD 3.5" disk, which won't be big enough for the disk images :D
Hi Verdraith, thanks for the reply, and sorry for the confusion...
I'm on Nextstep 3.3. its a 1.4M (Maxell 2HD) floppy that was formatted as mac, so it mounts on my Nextstation using its built-in floppy drive (so i assume the floppy drive itself is ok).
thanks again for your help
-terry
The commands you found involving `fd0a` are correct for the most part.
The 'I know this, this is a Unix system' Disclaimer
The details given here are for NeXT operating systems only.
These commands are mostly the same for other Unix and Unix-like systems, but you'd usually want a disk in the drive first.
On NeXT systems, the lack of a disk in the drive will cause the OS to prompt you to insert a floppy.
All commands must be done as root, and there must be no floppy in the drive.
To image a disk, as root:
dd if=/dev/rfd0b of=foo.img
Example:
# dd if=/dev/rfd0b of=disk.img
2688+0 records in
2688+0 records out
#
To put an image to disk, as root:
dd if=foo.img of=/dev/rfd0b
Example:
# dd if=disk.img of=/dev/rfd0b
2688+0 records in
2688+0 records out
#
To eject a disk when done, as root:
disk -e /dev/rfd0a
Why no floppy in the drive?
Because it's slower and more annoying, as you'll get to initialize the disk (read: format the thing), eject from Workspace (but not from the drive), and then do the dd then eject.
ahhh root. I didn't know that! :)
I followed your steps, it asked to insert disk and I did.
It immediately came back with:
write: No such device or address
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
sorry i'm sure its some basic/obvious thing i'm missing (like using 'root')
thanks again for your patience and help
-terry
Hmm, that doesn't sound healthy.
Can you try initialising the disk as a NeXT 1.44MB disk?
Before starting, head to the Workspace menu and bring up the console (Tools -> Console).
If it formats, eject it and try dd again. Keep an eye on the console window for any notices about /dev/rfd0a.
Actually, I can trigger a 'no such device or address' after pressing 'Cancel' at the 'Insert a disk' prompt.
In turn, I triggered that by using 'disk -e ...' before unmounting it (dragging the disk icon from the File Viewer to the Recycler) from Workspace.
If you can trigger it again, let me know what gets printed in the console window.
OK, I think that was the issue I was experiencing. It was having a problem with the mac disk. I initialized the disk first for NeXT and it proceeded with the image copy.
Ran into another issue now though. It seems to complete, but gives an error 0 at the end along with the seemingly successful:
write: Error 0
2689 + 0 records in
2689 + 0 records out
(and nothing appears in console)
I eject the disk (using your command) and try to insert it again and its "damaged" and i have to initialize it and start over again. Happens with multiple floppies. I wonder if there is an issue with my drive. :(
Is there any other way to mount these .img files on NeXTstep to install/copy off the stuff on there?
Any way thanks again.
Could be a drive issue. Ideally, you could test out a different drive to rule that out, but that's probably not all that easy these days :(
Alas, NeXT chose 4.2 BSD as the userland base... albeit updated to 4.3 BSD for later versions... this means there is no Linux-like method for mounting dd images directly.
You could try Previous, or even VirtualBox with NEXTSTEP or OPENSTEP Intel.
Out of interest, what disk images are they?
Yeah I actually have another floppy drive from a second next station that I tried and it gave me even more errors so that when I packed it in haha.
Yeah i am considering an emulator now.
I grabbed some stuff from
https://fsck.technology/software/NeXT/NeXTSTEP%20Applications/ that I wanted to mess with, ie: illustrator
-terry
My memory is a little sketchy but there may be one last thing to try. Use rfd0b instead of rfd0a in your dd command. I think that's how the live partition is accessed, although I could be wrong.
Yeah, looks like it should be rfd0b and not rfd0a, going to update my answer for future reference.
Thanks, I'm on the central coast of california and our powers now out, so I'll try it (hopefully) soon!
woohoo! That did it! I was able to successfully copy an IMG to the floppy. Thank you!!
-terry