Backups of Distibution Floppies

[John Temples]

In article <478 at loft386.UUCP> dpi at loft386.UUCP (Doug Ingraham) writes:
>Older versions of DOS will allow you to copy non-DOS diskettes, but not DOS
>3.30.  It gives the unfortunate message Non DOS Diskette.  Its this kind of

I "diskcopy" 286 and 386 Unix diskettes all the time with no problems under 
PC-DOS 3.3.  Even Unix boot diskettes copy fine.  Perhaps MS-DOS has the 
problem to which you refer, but not PC-DOS?

>This is not as fast as it would be under DOS because the UN*X vendors
>don't seem to care how fast the floppy driver operates.

How true.  Can someone tell us why the System V/386 floppy drivers are so slow?
Performance of the /dev/dsk/f* devices is abominable, and the /dev/rdsk/f*
devices are only marginally better.  The floppy drivers on my Venix/286 are
very fast -- I'd say they're even faster than DOS.  So obviously it *can* be
done right.
-- 
John Temples - UUCP: {uiucuxc,hoptoad,petsd}!peora!rtmvax!bilver!jwt!john