Reading PC floppies on Apollos

[Lee Hollaar]

In article <137 at wbcs.UUCP> howard at wbcs.UUCP (Howard Modell) writes:
> I (or rather a customer of mine) has a relatively frequent need to read data
> from DOS formatted floppies using an Apollo. The "why" of it isn't pertinent,
> but the customer states that his budget is such that getting a PC for the
> purpose isn't practical at this time, nor is does it seem appropriate to
> buy one of Apollo's DPCI/DPCC/DPCE integration solutions.  He doesn't need
> a DOS engine or processing capabilities at all ... he just needs to be able
> to read DOS formatted data, and the only devices he has with floppy drives
> are Apollos.
>
> The preferred solution would be an Apollo-based utility that performs this
> chore and nothing else (or little else).  It doesn't have to be specifically
> Unix-based, though it is not an obstacle if it is.
>
> Does anyone out there (1) know of such a program ...

We have such a program, consisting of a device driver for directly controlling
the floppy disk and a utility program that understands the DOS file system
(including subdirectories and DOS-style wildcards).  It can work with any
format floppy disk (360 Kbyte or 1.2 Mbyte; 8, 9, or 15 sectors per track;
1 or 2 sided disks), can read, write, or delete files on the floppy as well
as listing its directory, and can do either binary read/writes or will
translate the PC <cr><lf> line terminators to or from the Apollo standard
newlines.  It currently works with 9.7, and is being ported to 10.X.

The bad news is that we won't be giving this little goody away, but will be
licensing it for a nominal charge.  We will be sending information to the
local Apollo offices in a couple of weeks, or you can either contact me and
I'll send you the information about ordering.

                                     Lee Hollaar

Email: hollaar at cs.utah.edu
Mail:  Contexture, Inc.
       Attn: PCdisk information
       Post Office Box 8721
       Salt Lake City UT  84108