18 Feb
2007
18 Feb
'07
2:39 a.m.
I first booted into HDOS from floppy, the hard disk
version of NSDOS.
It has both non-destructive and destructive disk tests. "LI" shows that
there is no meaningful HDOS file system on the drive.
Next, I ran only the non-destructive test since one goal is to see what
is on the hard disk. HDOS, like NSDOS, has a command for reading
arbitrary absolute sectors from the floppy, but it isn't supported on
the hard drive -- instead you can load sectors relative to a named file,
which doesn't help me here.
Next I booted turbodos from floppy. "DIR" shows no meaningful file
system on either of the two partitions on the drive.
Finally, I'm at an impasse. I assume that this system had *something*
on the drive, although I suppose a previous owner did a FORMAT on the
drive before passing the system on. It would be easiest for me to just
format the drive and install either HDOS, or more likely, TurboDos and
get on with it. If I had more time I'd look into finding a mechanism to
read the hard drive sector by sector and make a copy, but the reality is
I have more projects than I have time for, so this seems unlikely.
Does anybody who has read this far have an idea what to do next? Format
and reinstall? Write my own driver to dump the disk first? Find an old
PC with a controller card that could interface to the drive?
Why not write a small program (on floppy) to read arbitrary sectors from
the hard drive and dump them out. I've never used HDOS (all of my N* systems
are floppy only), however I would expect that it's not hard. According to my
TurboDOS manual, T-function 22 provides for physical disk access.
Many XT and early AT controllers used the ST506 interface, however I don't
know if the N* controller uses a compatible format - it shouldn't hurt to
try as long as you don't write to the drive.
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
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