New program for FAT12/FAT16 archeology: PADD

[Chuck(G)]

Chuck, I can't find any specific links to similar tools you've authored, only evidence that you have authored some. If you have any specific info, I'd love to see what wheel I was reinventing...

Afraid not--but it's what I was doing between 1987 and 2001. Eventually sold the whole shebang to BAE/Armor. But it ran on everything from an 8088 on up, although it could make use of 32-bit facilities if they were present. I can tell you that it's very possible to handle FAT32 and NTFS in real mode; it's not fast, but you can do it.

 

[Trixter]

Sorry I don't. I used a copy back in the day when Ghost was still made by Ghost Soft. I tried looking for linkage but only thing I can find now is the Wiki article on ghost and some InfoWorld reviews.

I worked with the programmer in the early 1990s; I'll ask him. Maybe he still has a copy I can snarf.

 

[Trixter]

I got in contact with my former employee. He doesn't have a version 3.0 or earlier, but he clarified the history:

I touched base with a retired gentleman who worked at one of Murray's companies for many years before Ghost doing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B32_Business_Basic

He was able to definitely confirm that 3.0 and 3.1 *were* real mode; the compiler used was Borland Turbo C++ (although none of the C++ part, Murray all the people he had knew only C); the chap I talked to moved to work on Ghost from 3.x on, and he also thought that the DOS/4GW builds in Ghost 4.0 were segmented rather than flat.

So pretty much, the team size was growing exponentially and large swathes of the product were just rewritten from 3.0->4.0->5.0 - all in all though, 1.x - 3.0 were basically one-man prototyping efforts.

So yes, Ghost 3.0 and earlier should indeed work on 808x unless they were compiled with 286+ instruction support.

 

[Shadow Lord]

I got in contact with my former employee. He doesn't have a version 3.0 or earlier, but he clarified the history:



So yes, Ghost 3.0 and earlier should indeed work on 808x unless they were compiled with 286+ instruction support.

Now to actually find a copy :/ Or we can use your tool which is easily/immediately available

 

[Trixter]

Speaking of which, can somebody other than me give it a test? I want to blog about it, but not if I'm the only beta tester...

 

[Pepinno]

Full docs and source code are in the .zip from the web page listed above. I look forward to any comments, even if they're negative

In the web page FAQ ( http://www.oldskool.org/pc/PADD ) you say:

Q: Wouldn't using an imaging tool (ie. Norton Ghost, dd, etc.) be a more complete option for archiving a drive? Absolutely! If you know of any that run on old vintage PCs, let me know what they are ;-)

Alright, the real-mode 3.x version of Ghost has already been discussed in this thread. But what about "dd"? Does anyone know whether the 8086-version of Minix have a "dd" command to capture the full image of a disc device?

 

[tingo]

Minix has dd: http://www.minix3.org/manpages/html1/dd.html
but I haven't used it, so I can't confirm if it works to copy a disc.