Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jerry Feldman]

On 01/31/2012 09:19 AM, Tom Buskey wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org
> <mailto:gaf at blu.org>> wrote:
>
>     On 01/30/2012 05:08 PM, Bill Freeman wrote:
>     > On 1/30/12, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com
>     <mailto:dragonhawk at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     >> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe!
>     >> <mwl+gnhlug at alumni.unh.edu
>     <mailto:mwl%2Bgnhlug at alumni.unh.edu>> wrote:
>     >>>> What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
>     >>>> Were they partitioned like HDDs?
>     >>> Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
>     >>> used the PC floppy drive controller interface.
>     >>   Well, now, the hang-a-tape-drive-off-the-floppy-controller
>     thing was
>     >> something else entirely.  As far as I know, there was never any
>     >> standard PC/BIOS/DOS/whatever interface for tape drives, so if
>     someone
>     >> made one of those they had to invent their own thing.
>     >>
>     >>   But I find it interesting that the "super floppies" behaved like
>     >> floppies.  My understanding is (was) that the PC had a rather
>     narrow
>     >> idea of what a floppy disk could be (360, 1.2, 720, 1.44, 2.88,
>     maybe
>     >> a few more).  How did that work?
>     > There are at least four different meanings of "floppy" in use here:
>     >
>
>  
>
>     Floppy disks predated the PC. There were many different types, sizes
>     and formats. There were even floppies that had hard formatting (eg
>     holes).
>     The other difference between floppy devices and hard drives was
>     the side
>     of the FAT table. Floppies used a 12 or 16 bit FAT table. But, the
>     original IBM PC was a floppy-only product.
>
>
>
> FWIW, Solaris, SunOS do have an idea of partitions on floppies, but it
> isn't used.  I think Ultrix and OSF/1 (later Digital Unix, Tru64) did too.
>
> I don't think my Apple ][ floppies were ever partitioned, but I had
> flippys :-/
>
I agree. I don't think my Apple ][ floppies were partitioned. Back in
the day there were a plethora of floppies. You had 8 in., 5 in. There
were a number of Word Processors in the 70s that used floppies. The PC
changed the landscape for both floppies and HDs, and also other
removable media.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90


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