Archiving Software

[Scott Stevens]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 12:01:51 +0000
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I need to make the host machine dual-boot DOS/Linux so I can
> just use DOS to  the actual reading/writing, then Linux for
> everything else (archival, any  processing of the files, taking
> advantage of being able to use longer  filenames etc.).
> 
> I'll give DOSEMU a try under Linux to see if it'll run
> ImageDisk, but I  suspect it won't allow the necessary direct
> access to the hardware... but I'm  happy to dedicate a box to
> disk imaging, so it doesn't really matter if the  Linux floppy
> subsystem gets clobbered in the process. I suspect that
> ImageDisk  won't even run under DOSEMU though.
> 

You can configure DOSEMU (at least last time I tried, which was
the kernel 1.2 era) to tunnel through and give deep direct access
to the hardware where necessary.  Particularly on something like
the floppy interface that Linux doesn't integrate and use that
much in the first place.  You can even compile out the floppy disk
interface in the linux kernel entirely to give the 'whole thing'
to DOSEMU if you like.  I've run my ISA-card EPROM programmer
under DOSEMU on a Linux box.

> 
> cheers
> 
> Jules