[ILUG] Floppy problems

[Kevin Philp]

Networking...yes we are getting there. All the Linux desktops are networked 
with the Linux server...that was the easy bit. I am playing with Samba on a 
test setup and hope to soon connect the Win NT machine control computer and 
our colleagues Win XP laptop. The DOS box however is in its own personal 
universe for now... ironically it controls the most expensive machine in the 
company!!

Kevin.

On Wednesday 6 April 2005 12:35, Niall O Broin wrote:
>On 6 Apr 2005, at 12:08, Kevin Philp wrote:
>> One of the machines that seems to give disks that we can't read is a
>> Dell, Win
>> XP laptop. For example:
>>
>> 1. Put file on floppy using laptop and try to read on Linux machines
>> or Win NT
>> and get a corrupt file message
>>
>> 2. Very old DOS machine reads this floppy OK. Use DOS machine to copy
>> file to
>> another place on the disk (just copy with anew name)
>>
>> 3. New copy reads just fine on all machines
>
>This is exactly the type of head numbing crap alignment issues can give
>you. Think of alignment as being a point on a line. Any given point is
>happy to work with other points within a certain distance. The Linux
>and NT machines are too far away on the line from the XP machine, so
>they can't read files written by it. The DOS machine sits on the line
>between the XP machine and the others. It can read the XP files, and
>when it rewrites them, it's near enough to the XP machine (in one
>direction) and the Linux + NT machines (in the other direction) that
>they can all read its files. Your DOS machine has the Rosetta stone  of
>floppy drives. Don't lose it - Rosetta stones are hard to find :-)
>
>> Are laptop floppies more prone to alignment problems? All that
>> crashing around?
>
>Very possible, I suppose.
>
>> Buy a job lot of floppies and replace all floppies with same make /
>> same model
>
>Except that that won't work with the laptop, as you can't replace its
>drive with a generic 10 EUR model.
>
>> Buy the guy with the laptop a USB memory stick.
>
>That'll help him get files to the Linux, and I suppose NT, machine. Not
>much use for the DOS machine though.
>
>One other thing to try is to format the diskettes on the DOS box. It
>may or may not work, but it's a very quick and cheap test.
>
>Another thing you might want to try is the concept of networking. They
>say it's the coming thing, and I gather very many people are now using
>it rather successfully for file transfer instead of diskettes. I
>understand that DOS, NT and Linux machines may even all use the same
>network. This could be quite useful for you.
>
>
>Niall