On 03/01/2017 01:58 PM, Anthony Youngman wrote:

Has he got VirtualBox or similar? Can you copy the images to a laptop hard-drive? Can you mount the images in VirtualBox?

Actually, it's just struck me - linux has no trouble loopback-mounting a disk image - can you mount those images in linux and just copy the files out of it? If all you want to do is recover the disk contents, with those drives you could almost certainly just mount them in linux, burn the contents to a CD, and let him recover the stuff off that!

Cheers, Wol

Wol (and others), it isn't a matter of just wanting to have the files. That data we have, more or less. No, it is a bit of a conundrum, to wit: (please follow without condemnation) - friend has some old IBM laptops from Win 3.11 and Win 95 era - 2 of these are used by him for very specific purpose that seems not to work with any other hardware/software combination - This project is not to recover data or to fix drives, it is to take blank drives and essentially make them copies of those that boot and run so his other hardware will work just like the 2 working laptops - Due to the driver requirements of those antique OS, (and lack thereof in his junkbox) basically only a cloned drive will boot and run - I, of course, said Oh, yeah, I can do that, then the fun started. - Said friend lives several miles from here, so any changes done here have to wait until our paths cross. Not difficult but not quick, either. I might also add that the original drives are around 1GB with less than 170MB of data and the spare drives range from 176MB to 1GB AND my gparted will NOT resize a working FAT16 drive (maybe won't any other, either but don't know). I want to thank everyone who has chimed in with suggestions. Some have been spot on and have worked great. I will try just copying the first 170MB or so of the image and we shall see how that works. I'll report back whenever I find out. =================== -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 01/03/17 23:59, Stevens wrote:

On 03/01/2017 01:58 PM, Anthony Youngman wrote:

...

Has he got VirtualBox or similar? Can you copy the images to a laptop hard-drive? Can you mount the images in VirtualBox?

Actually, it's just struck me - linux has no trouble loopback-mounting a disk image - can you mount those images in linux and just copy the files out of it? If all you want to do is recover the disk contents, with those drives you could almost certainly just mount them in linux, burn the contents to a CD, and let him recover the stuff off that!

Cheers, Wol

Wol (and others), it isn't a matter of just wanting to have the files. That data we have, more or less. No, it is a bit of a conundrum, to wit: (please follow without condemnation) - friend has some old IBM laptops from Win 3.11 and Win 95 era - 2 of these are used by him for very specific purpose that seems not to work with any other hardware/software combination - This project is not to recover data or to fix drives, it is to take blank drives and essentially make them copies of those that boot and run so his other hardware will work just like the 2 working laptops - Due to the driver requirements of those antique OS, (and lack thereof in his junkbox) basically only a cloned drive will boot and run - I, of course, said Oh, yeah, I can do that, then the fun started. - Said friend lives several miles from here, so any changes done here have to wait until our paths cross. Not difficult but not quick, either.

There's more than one way to skin a cat ... Your Win3/Dos system - that shouldn't need to be a direct clone? Can you format the new disk? One partition, fat16, make it bootable, make sure the disk has got an mbr. Copy ALL the files from the old disk to the new with a "cp -a". One clone that should work fine. I expect the same technique should work for Win95. The other thing is, ask if anybody here has stuff in their toolbox to help. I've got DOS6.22 disk images, Win3.11, Win95/8 rescue floppy, etc etc. Little tip - I don't know whether you said it in your original post, but if you always say WHAT you are trying to achieve (here rescue a couple of systems) and don't focus on the HOW (cloning the disks), you're likely to get a far broader range of helpful pointers.

I might also add that the original drives are around 1GB with less than 170MB of data and the spare drives range from 176MB to 1GB AND my gparted will NOT resize a working FAT16 drive (maybe won't any other, either but don't know).

I want to thank everyone who has chimed in with suggestions. Some have been spot on and have worked great. I will try just copying the first 170MB or so of the image and we shall see how that works. I'll report back whenever I find out.

Oh - and try to run his system in DosBox or similar - if you can get him off this hardware, that'll be far better - what will you do when something more serious dies? Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 02/03/17 13:02, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2017-03-02 13:53, Wols Lists wrote:

...

On 01/03/17 23:59, Stevens wrote:

...

There's more than one way to skin a cat ...

Your Win3/Dos system - that shouldn't need to be a direct clone?

Can you format the new disk? One partition, fat16, make it bootable, make sure the disk has got an mbr.

Copy ALL the files from the old disk to the new with a "cp -a".

Or with mtools, mcopy, because it should copy all msdos attributes.

You just have to be careful not to overwrite the two inmutable or unmovable files - sorry, I don't remember the names, and they can vary a bit. The boot record has the position of those two files created at format /s time hard written.

Okay, with cp then, the appropriate option is --no-clobber. Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 02/03/2017 15:02, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2017-03-02 13:53, Wols Lists wrote:

...

On 01/03/17 23:59, Stevens wrote:

...

There's more than one way to skin a cat ...

Your Win3/Dos system - that shouldn't need to be a direct clone?

Can you format the new disk? One partition, fat16, make it bootable, make sure the disk has got an mbr.

Copy ALL the files from the old disk to the new with a "cp -a". Or with mtools, mcopy, because it should copy all msdos attributes.

You just have to be careful not to overwrite the two inmutable or unmovable files - sorry, I don't remember the names, and they can vary a bit. The boot record has the position of those two files created at format /s time hard written.

IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS Dave P -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2017-03-03 18:04, Alec Destry wrote:

...

"the two inmutable or unmovable files - sorry, I don't remember the names, and they can vary a bit. The boot record has the position of those two files created at format /s time hard written."

I believe the names of those files are: IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS and they have to be listed as the first and second files respectively in the root directory.

Yes, those were the typical names. Another variant was something like ibmio.sys, I think. But the position in the root directory was irrelevant: what mattered was the actual blocks in the disk they occupied. The function that reads them into memory at boot knows nothing about reading directories. It just loads blocks of disk data into specified memory location. It is the same function, I believe, that the boot record code uses currently to load grub on MBR disks. They were the first entries in the directory because normally they were created on empty disks. But you could create them much later on a disk that already hold data with the command SYS. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" (Minas Tirith))

On 2017-03-04 00:43, Felix Miata wrote:

Carlos E. R. composed on 2017-03-03 19:13 (UTC+0100):

...

Another variant was something like ibmio.sys, I think.

PC-DOS 2000 40726 Apr 30 1998 ibmbio.com 37066 Apr 30 1998 ibmdos.com

It must be ages since I see that one... And I did see it, so I'm too old for my liking. :-} -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" (Minas Tirith))