Date   : Mon, 21 Jan 1985 03:51:03 GMT
From   : Melinda Shore <shor%sphinx.uchicago.uucp@BRL-TGR.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Need program to read/write MS-DOS format in Pascal

[]

> From: news@brl-tgr.ARPA (David Roth
> Does anyone know of a public domain program to help read/write MS-DOS
> format (written in Pascal of course), on non-IBM-PC type machines?  We
> have a need to do this on just about any kind of micro with a 5 1/4
> disk drive.  Apples, Osborne, Kaypro,etc...  The reason for Pascal is
> that at least that much or it would be portable and the low level
> stuff could be done just for that machine.
> Oh, I have run across a program on a local R-CP/M system here called
> RDMSDOS.C which claims to work on CP/M systems.

If it was done right, your RDMSDOS.C should work correctly on just about any 
CP/M system.  The author should have used BDOS call 31, which returns the
address of the disk parameter block in HL.  Since the DPB is a fixed size
across all CP/M systems, you now know where to stuff the information you have
about the MS-DOS disk format.  Needless to say, it's a little more 
complicated than that, since the MS-DOS FAT is somewhat different from CP/M's
FCB, but it's really not that complicated.

BTW, could you send along a copy of your C program if it turns out to public
domain?

Melinda Shore
University of Chicago Computation Center