Hi Felix and Dennis, > I just looked inside http://www.freedos.org/download/download/FD12FLOPPY.zip > "boot floppy", and a 3.5" 1.44M floppy. My floppy has 1457664 total bytes, > 2847 > 512 byte sectors. The image downloaded is 1474560 bytes, so the downloaded > image > would not fit here either.
That is a misunderstanding. The FLOPPY really is 80 tracks, 2 sides, 18 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector: 1474560 bytes is correct. However, if you want to put a FILE on a floppy, then the maximum size for the FILE is less, because some space is used by the FAT filesystem. So 1457664 is the size left for you to put files on. This is why the boot floppy disk image has to be copied with some special tools (Linux: dd, DOS: diskcopy, Windows: ..., Mac: ...) which copy contents, filesystem, boot sector etc. all at once. This also is why you do not see files IN that single image file in FD12FLOPPY.zip: You would have to "open" the file as a FAT filesystem to see the files that you will later see on your disk after putting the diskimage as a whole on the floppy. If we would offer the files separately in the ZIP, you would be able to see and edit them at once, which is good, BUT you would need a separate tool to install a boot sector to make it bootable, which is inconvenient, because SYS is only available for DOS and similar tools for other OS (like makebootfat or sys-freedos.pl for Linux) would need specific command line options to produce optimized DOS boot sectors. Regards, Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
