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Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 11:22:34 +0100 (BST)
From: "K.J.Koster" <kjk1@ukc.ac.uk>
To: FreeBSD Hackers <hackers@freebsd.org>
Cc: FreeBSD Questions <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Do *you* have problems with floppies?
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Come to think of it...
Just a few days ago I made a floppy image from a freshly formatted MS-DOS
floppy ("dd if/dev/fd0.1440 of=msdos.flop") Then, when I tried to dump it
over an old FreeBSD boot floppy, it just died on me halfway. I'll root
through the bin at home, to find it again, but it might be stuck under a
teabag or something. I'll play with this again, see if I can reproduce it.
I think it may have something to do with long files. I wrote my own bsplit
at some point, which made files nearly as large as a floppy, but I kept
having trouble with damaged floppies. Now I've changed bsplit to make
smaller chunks, and I have no trouble anymore %-)
Wild guess: driver needs to recalibrate every once in a while, so if you
write a whole floppy at once, it slowly loses calibration. MS-DOS
`recalibrates' by writing the FAT every block or so. How does that sound?
Groetjes,
Kees Jan
---------------------------------------------------------------v--
Kees Jan Koster tel: UK-1227-453157 e-mail: kjk1@ukc.ac.uk
15 St. Michaels Road, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom
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from trials come errors... from errors come legends...