Date   : Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:29:13 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: Linux user-space DFS and ADFS tools?

Andrew Benham wrote:
> Jules Richardson wrote:
> 
>> Before I try to sling something together, has anyone got any 
>> user-space DFS and ADFS tools that will run under Linux? I just need 
>> something that'll pull all individual files out of raw floppy images 
>> and stick them under a subdir in the host filesystem, so nothing too 
>> complex.
> 
> One of the annoyances in this world is that there is an 'adfs' kernel
> module, but as I recall it only supports the 'new' ADFS formats used
> on the Archimedes onwards.

Yep, that's my understanding too (I was looking at the source earlier but gave 
up :)

> Hot news: I thought that these new formats were 'D' and 'E', so I googled
> and came up with:
> 
> http://inputplus.co.uk/ralph/#adfs

problem with the linux raw floppy interface is that it's not *that* raw; 
there's still a level of abstraction that gets in the way of trying to cope 
with damaged media and automatic format analysis.

I'm currently reading floppies with a DOS-based tool that can do 
analysis/recovery, and then shifting the resulting images across to the Linux 
box for archive and (intended) inspection of contents.  Hardly ideal, but it 
looks like doing that sort of work on Linux is going to need a kernel-level 
driver, so I'm ignoring it for the moment :)

JGH has DFS formats up on his website:

http://mdfs.net/Docs/Comp/Disk/Format/DFS

... but apparently not ADFS (or Torch DFS, which I think is different yet 
again to the other DFS formats; I think I might have the spec somewhere and 
will try and hunt it out)

Still, I'll get cracking with something to handle DFS disk images in the 
meantime I think!

cheers

Jules