Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 15 Mar 2000 20:34:00 +0000 (GMT) | From | James Sutherland <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] zip drives |
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On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Manfred Spraul wrote:
> From: "James Sutherland" <jas88@cam.ac.uk> > > > Gadi Oxman writes: > > > > > > > Another point to add is that some (newer?) ZIP drives have a jumper > > > > on them which enables some cheat mode for MSDOS which actually hides > > > > some sectors from the device driver. > > Both WinNT and Windows 95 need the cheat mode: IIRC they don't analyze the > partition table if the device reports itself as ATAPI FLOPPY.
Oh dear. #include <broken-code-rant.h>
OTOH, why would/could a floppy contain a partition table?
> > > > That is, block 0 on the drive > > > > actually moves along with the partition table, and perhaps also the > > > > reported capacity. > Fixed 32 blocks, they don't analyze the partition table. > > > [...] > > Load first sector. Is it an MBR/partition table, or a boot sector? > > If the former, add an offset of 32 sectors to all subsequent accesses. > > This way, we get consistent behaviour from both types of drive. > > You then always mount /dev/sda (or whatever). > > What if you have a partition table with != 32 sectors? Just try to mount an > hfs formatted disk, the lenght of the partition table depends on the version > of the formatter :-(
Oh dear... #define EXTREMELY_BROKEN #include <broken-code-rant.h>
Fortunately, the 32 sector bit may not matter now - if we can implement the following...
> But it possible to disable this mode with some special ATAPI commands, IIRC > my brother told me that he send them to a linux developer a few months ago.
Provided we can do this *RELIABLY* (i.e. on ALL Zip drives), this could be the best solution. Simply ensure that we always see the entire disk, and so it will always be mounted as /dev/hda4 (assuming it is partitioned that way).
James.
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