Bug#99926: rawrite2 alternatives
David Whedon <dwhedon@gordian.com> wrote:
> Here are some alternatives to rawrite2. I haven't used them at all (no
> Windows access), they just turned up on a net search.
It appears that the problem with rawrite2 is intermittent, but it was
able to be reproduced. At first I thought I just had a few bad floppies
in my junk floppy drawer. It could still be that, but we should find an
alternative anyway.
I tested the following alternatives on 98SE and 2000 boxes. It will
require a windows native application to make disks on XP. I tested
winimage6 with the latest cvs compact boot floppies, which seemed to
only recognize 1 of 3 images. Just before I sent this I found a cool
windows version that seems to work well. See the last paragraph. The
tests were done on multiple floppies and different machines. All
floppies were tested via initial install process.
FDVOL is simple and works well on both 98SE and 2000. The source is
available here:
http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/minix/CD-ROM-2.0/
WrtDsk seems a bit too slow but I like the idea that the author wants
you to support the red cross *g*, and it also seems to support multiple
images at once, though I did not test that feature. It was a pain to
figure out, so I don't recommend it for noobs. I also could not find the
source code for this program.
rawrite3 is a de-evolved rawrite2, there seems to be no help text and
the initial "pick a file:" prompt is floating out in the middle of
text line 25 in the console. The title is centered at the top. This is
not curses, what was the developer thinking? I was not satisfied so I
did not test it for functionality. I did find the source code for all
three versions of rawrite here:
http://www.fdos.org/ripcord/rawrite/
ntrawrite did not seem to work in 98SE but it did work like a charm in
2000. It is not too terribly difficult to use, but it is not exactly
idiot proof. I recommend this for use in 2000 as it has a verification
phase after write and it also allows for creating images from floppies.
The source code can be found on sourceforge.
http://ntrawrite.sourceforge.net/
>From the freedos location I found two additional programs, dskimage and
rawritewin.
DskImage was too slow on my 98SE box, so I did not bother testing on
other systems. Though it has a nifty ascii gui, I do not recommend it if
you are in a hurry. The source is available (see above URL).
rawritewin is very cool. It has the following features: create images
from floppy, create multiple floppies, command line arguments, help
text, and it is distributed under the gnu gpl. It is perhaps as fast as
fdvol and rawrite2. Oh yeah, it has a cool penguin icon ;) The source
code is available from:
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite.htm
Of the above programs, I recommend further testing of fdvol, ntrawrite,
and definately rawritewin for 9x, 2k, and XP (when I get enough time, I
will test this in XP). That is all I have for now. Enjoy!
--
Derek Evan Mart "Marticus" - Systems Programmer II
U of L - Electrical & Computer Engineering
The Marticus Project - http://www.marticus.org/
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