The Hive Archive

Device manufacturers still haven’t caught on that floppy drives are no longer standard equipment on most modern machines. I recently came across this issue when trying to install a RAID driver on a Solaris 10 (x86) box, and solved it thusly:


# lofiadm -a /export/home/mmichie/tmp/ARCMSR.DD /dev/lofi/1
# mount -F pcfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt/floppy/

# mkisofs -R -J -o driverdisk.iso /mnt/floppy/
Total translation table size: 0
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 2428
Total directory bytes: 16384
Path table size(bytes): 122
Max brk space used 10000
278 extents written (0 MB)


In other words, download the raw floppy image and mount it as a loopback device. Then use mkisofs to translate it to an iso. Use your favorite CD-R burning software to burn the ISO. Install your driver disk. This can be done similarly in Linux, the main difference will be mounting the floppy image:

mount -o loop driverdisk.img /mnt

The mkisofs command will be exactly the same as Solaris.

Apparently once in the iTunes EULA:

You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.

Did they take it out? I can’t find it in the latest one.