From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Aug 7 19:23:59 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from freeside.fc.net (freeside.fc.net [207.170.70.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9E71A37B53C for ; Mon, 7 Aug 2000 19:23:51 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jdunham@freeside.fc.net) Received: (from jdunham@localhost) by freeside.fc.net (8.9.3/8.8.8) id VAA14943; Mon, 7 Aug 2000 21:23:29 -0500 (CDT) From: Jerry Dunham Message-Id: <200008080223.VAA14943@freeside.fc.net> Subject: Re: mount alien floppy? (Brother word processor) In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20000807101457.07b0e100@mail.scls.lib.wi.us> from Network Administrator at "Aug 7, 2000 10:27:17 am" To: admin@scls.lib.wi.us (Network Administrator) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 21:23:29 -0500 (CDT) Cc: marc.vanwoerkom@science-factory.com (Marc van Woerkom), freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Network Administrator babbled: > Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2000 10:27:17 -0500 > At 08:16 AM 8/7/00 , Marc van Woerkom wrote: > >Is there no way to link the brother hardware to a FreeBSD box? > >Seraial link or such? > > > >If those floppies are readable at all on PC hardware you might have > >luck hunting for a converter in old MS DOS file collections (like > >FIDO mailbox systems :) > > No linkage is possible. The Brother unit has an integrated daisy wheel > printer. There are no output ports of any kind. > > The floppies are truly alien. I tried dd with if=/dev/fd0 and it aborted > when fd0 didn't find what it expected. Their web site indicates that their > oldest models use a 240K proprietary format, and I think that is what I'm > up against. > > Pretty sure I'm near the end of this line of inquiry, as it seems the only > thing to do now would be to attempt connecting their floppy drive hardware > to a Wintel motherboard and writing a custom FreeBSD driver for it. I'm not > seriously considering trying it myself, and (since it seems notably > unprofitable and masochistic) I don't expect anyone to leap forward and > volunteer. I may have missed something, but why not stick the floppy in a Brother machine (borrowed, if you no longer have one), print it out, and take it to your scanner? You'd have some reformatting to do, and possibly a few scanos to correct, but you'd at least have your documents back. -- Jerry Dunham FreeBSD http://www.dunham.org jdunham@fc.net jerry@dunham.org (512)335-0674 (H) E Pluribus Unix To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message