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TRS-Xenix Diskette problem

K

Kevin Adams

Member
Joined
Jul 4, 2010
Messages
35
I have posted this to comp.sys.tandy. If you read it there, I appologise for the duplication...

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I am using a Tandy 6000 computer running TRS-Xenix version 03.02.00.

I recently bought a set of 7 eight inch single sided double density floppy disks on eBay with TRS-Xenix games on them.

The first thing I did when I received them was to make images of all the disks with a Catweasel card using Tim Mann's CW2DMK software. All disks read perfectly.

I created copies of the disks with the Catweasel and have been trying to get the programs installed on the model 6000.

When I try to mount the disks, I get the message "bad super block". The help file for the command "fsck" suggests that it may need to be run against floppy disks from earlier versions of TRS-Xenix in order to read them in version 3.x, so I tried running fsck against the copies. fsck gives the error "unknown file system version". All 7 disks produce the same error. I tried the original disks in case the copy was flawed and got the same result.

When I run a binary/text viewer against the DMK image files I can see unix paths and filenames, and much of the text of the games that I am looking for including the game I want most for TRS-Xenix, Nethack.

I find it hard to believe that all 7 of these disks really have a bad super block. I feel that it must be some assumption I've made that's wrong or that I'm reading them incorrectly.

I can send you the DMK files if you have the ability to help.

I welcome any ideas you can offer.

Kevin
 
So you won them!! Any chance of getting copies of the images?

Did you try to

tar tvf /dev/fd0

and see if it reads the disks? If you're seeing full pathnames, my guess is they're probably tar disks.

Kelly
 
Thank you very much for Solving the problem Kelly! This worked!!

I've just emailed you the disk images!

Kevin
 
Just an update:
tar tvf /dev/fd0 only gave you a listing of the files. To extract them, use

tar xvf /dev/fd0

That will actually write them to your hard drive.
 
So in this instance the version of Xenix he's running doesn't understand the file system format of the disk enough to mount the disks (hence the bad superblock error) but they're good in the sense that he can obviously read the data using tar? I'm a little confused, were these tape images converted to floppy so reading the floppy like a tape archive works or were these done incorrectly perhaps and it's just a tar file that was dumped to the disk in raw format?
 
Xenix Games

Xenix Games

Kevin,

I have three TRS 80 Xenix machines, Model 16A, 16B and a 4000HD. Wondering if I could get a copy of the Xenix games DMK files. I am will to compensate you for them. Let me know

Brad
 
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