Re: self-extracting diskette image to hard disk?

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 01:45:02 UTC, "tholen@xxxxxxxxxxxx"
<tholen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Doug Bissett writes:
>
> >> It's great that IBM is still providing OS/2 device drivers for the
> >> T series of ThinkPads. However, I am a little puzzled as to why
> >> the executable files that you can download from their web site
> >> require extraction to a floppy diskette, especially when the
> >> ThinkPad models in question don't even come with a floppy disk
> >> drive.
>
> > Simple. IBM still thinks that personal computers are "toys", not worth
> > bothering with. They just don't think about them, at all.
>
> Maybe that's why they sold them to Lenovo.

They sold to Lenovo, because they couldn't make money selling them as
toys. I doubt if it ever occured to IBM to actually design, and
properly support (including with a proper OS), a real desktop
computer. Could you imagine how well a 30 Ghz Power PC, with about 16
GiB of memory, and a 1000 GiB hard disk drive, running a microkernel
version of OS/2, would run (and, IBM should have been able to do that,
5 years ago, with nothing more than the existing technology, ata cost
of about US$3000)? Then, make it available in multi processor versions
(up to 64 processors), for some serious computing. Intel, and
Microsoft would be out of business, and IBM would again be a world
leader, instead of a dog, limping along at the back of the pack.

> > You will
> > also find, that IBM has, on occasion, packaged an OS/2 program, or
> > update, inside of a windows program, so you need to run windows to
> > extract them to the non existant diskette drive.
>
> Yes, I have noticed that. Some of the drivers for Intel NICs have been
> buried inside a massive file requiring Windows to unpack.
>
> >> I'm trying to install the audio and network drivers for a T43p.
> >> I've got the driver files from IBM's web site, but I do not have a
> >> floppy disk drive handy, nor access to a machine with one for the
> >> next two weeks, and I'd rather not wait that long to get the audio
> >> and network features working.
> >>
> >> Is there some way I can extract the files to hard disk? I tried
> >> using VDISK.SYS to make a floppy-sized virtual drive, but it
> >> didn't work, possibly because the maximum sector size allowed is
> >> 512 bytes, but 1.44 MB floppies have 1024 byte sectors.
>
> > VDISK is a virtual hard disk. You need a virtual diskette drive. The
> > best available, is VFDISK:
> >
> > http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/system/drivers/filesys/vfdisk30.zip
> >
> > You are also mistaken about 1.44 MB diskettes having 1024 byte
> > sectors. ALL normal diskettes, and hard disks, have 512 byte sectors.
>
> Hmm. I used HELP FORMAT to find that a 1.44 MB floppy has 80 tracks
> and 18 sectors, which worked out to 1024 byte sectors, but didn't
> consider
> the possibility that the number of sectors is really 36 when you count
> both sides of the floppy. In any event, it still didn't work with the
> bytes per sector set to 512.

VDISK won't work, period. It does not emulate a diskette, it emulates
a hard disk, and the extract program is written to extract to a
diskette, not to a hard disk. If you use a different extract program
(there are three, or four of them), you can extract directlry to hard
disk. BTW, RAMFS is better, than VDISK, if you want to emulate a hard
disk in memory, most of the time.

Hope this helps...
--
>From the eComStation 1.2 of Doug Bissett
doug dot bissett at attglobal dot net
(Please make the obvious changes, to e-mail me)

.

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