Date   : Sun, 12 Feb 2006 23:22:10 +0000
From   : Stephen Hippisley-Cox <s.d.hippisley-cox@...>
Subject: Re: Reading and writing BBC DFS disks under Linux

Andrew Benham wrote:
> Stephen Hippisley-Cox wrote:
> 
>> I'm having trouble trying to access BBC DFS 3.5in floppies under Linux.
>>  The Omniflop website hints that it should be fairly easy to do, but I'm
>> afraid I'm stuck.
>> Anyone have any ideas? Is it a matter of finding the right parameters
>> for setfdprm?
> 
> I've had success today reading ADFS disks on Linux, using LibDsk
> (http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Unix/LibDsk/).
> 
> "dsktrans /dev/fd0 foo.raw -otype raw -format acorn640 -logical"
> 
> has given me a 640k ADFS image file which looks right.
> 
> 
> Doing DFS requires that the hardware supports single-density.
> 
> LibDsk looks to support DFS (disk types 'bbc100     : BBC 100k'
> and 'bbc200     : BBC 200k').
> 
> I know early PCs which used a genuine floppy disk controller IC
> tended to have the "density select" pin on the IC hard-wired
> to the "double density" position.
> 

Omniflop on win2k can merrily read and write disks on my system, so the
hardware is OK -- it's just that I'd rather not have to reboot and use
Windows...