Message-ID: <7392@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 16-Jan-85 01:40:55 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.7392
Posted: Wed Jan 16 01:40:55 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 03:43:40 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
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Does anyone know of a public domain program to help read/write MS-DOS
format (written in Pascal of course), on non-IBM-PC type machines?  We
have a need to do this on just about any kind of micro with a 5 1/4
disk drive.  Apples, Osborne, Kaypro,etc...  The reason for Pascal is
that at least that much or it would be portable and the low level
stuff could be done just for that machine.  (Sort of like xmodem7 is
patched.)  Thanks in advance.

Oh, I have run across a program on a local R-CP/M system here called
RDMSDOS.C which claims to work on CP/M systems..  But I am in the
process of contacting the author before excepting it as Public Domain.
I will let you know if it is or not.

				David Roth
	...decvax!pur-ee!isrnix!pugsly
				Indianapolis,IN
			US Mail:
				COMMANDER USA Soldier Support Center
				ATSG-DTU-S
				Attn: Mr. David Roth
				Ft. Harrison,IN 46216-5590

Message-ID: <155@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Jan-85 22:51:03 EST
Article-I.D.: sphinx.155
Posted: Sun Jan 20 22:51:03 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 04:44:03 EST
References: <7392@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Organization: U. Chicago - Computation Center
Lines: 25

[]

 >  From: news@brl-tgr.ARPA (David Roth
 >  Does anyone know of a public domain program to help read/write MS-DOS
 >  format (written in Pascal of course), on non-IBM-PC type machines?  We
 >  have a need to do this on just about any kind of micro with a 5 1/4
 >  disk drive.  Apples, Osborne, Kaypro,etc...  The reason for Pascal is
 >  that at least that much or it would be portable and the low level
 >  stuff could be done just for that machine.
 >  Oh, I have run across a program on a local R-CP/M system here called
 >  RDMSDOS.C which claims to work on CP/M systems.

If it was done right, your RDMSDOS.C should work correctly on just about any 
CP/M system.  The author should have used BDOS call 31, which returns the
address of the disk parameter block in HL.  Since the DPB is a fixed size
across all CP/M systems, you now know where to stuff the information you have
about the MS-DOS disk format.  Needless to say, it's a little more 
complicated than that, since the MS-DOS FAT is somewhat different from CP/M's
FCB, but it's really not that complicated.

BTW, could you send along a copy of your C program if it turns out to public
domain?

Melinda Shore
University of Chicago Computation Center