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From: Torfinn Ingolfsen on 19 Aug 2008 14:04
Hello,
Do anyone have a utility to read HP LIF[2,3] disks under FreeBSD?
More specific, 3.5 inch DS/DD disks.
I looked at LIF Utilities for linux[1], but my only linux machine is a
laptop, the only floppy it has is an external usb one, and it doesn't work.
The readme in the source code archive explains that it programs the
floppy controller directly, so no surprise, really.
The readme also indicates that lif_utils will be hard to port to other
operating system (for example FreeBSD), since it programs the floppy
controller directly.
I have several FreeBSD machines with floppy drives, so anything
runnning under FreeBSD would be helpful.
I understand that HP-UX machines have utilities to read LIF disks,
unfortunately, I don't own a HP-UX machine, nor do I have access to one.

Any hints?

References:
1) http://www.hpcc.org/datafile/hpil/lif_utils.html
2) http://docs.hp.com/en/B9106-90011/lif.4.html
3) http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.cgi?read=24
--
Torfinn Ingolfsen,
Norway
From: jpd on 19 Aug 2008 14:49
Begin <48ab0b12(a)news.broadpark.no>
On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:04:00 +0200, Torfinn Ingolfsen <tingo(a)start.no> wrote:
> The readme also indicates that lif_utils will be hard to port to other
> operating system (for example FreeBSD), since it programs the floppy
> controller directly.
> I have several FreeBSD machines with floppy drives, so anything
> runnning under FreeBSD would be helpful.

Booting a linux livecd (perhaps with those lif utils accessible over NFS)
isn't an option?


> I understand that HP-UX machines have utilities to read LIF disks,
> unfortunately, I don't own a HP-UX machine, nor do I have access to one.

A long shot and probably not feasible: NetBSD/68k has a syscall emulator
for hpux (8 or 9) for the hp9k/300 and /400 series. So if you can find
1) a 68k based box that'll run NetBSD (eg. an amiga) 2) suitable hpux/68k
libraries and those lifutils, you might be able to get them to work. Then
again, syscall emulation is one thing, hardware emulation is another. So
success is a low-order probability, but possibly a non-zero one.


> 3) http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.cgi?read=24

This talks about dos-based utilities, but the links are dead. It may
be worth feeding those to archive.org to see if that brings anything.


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
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