I found an old floppy disk from my Smith Corona word processor. Windows can’t read it at all. And Suse comes up with this message:
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
I believe these old word processors used their own file systems, and mine was bought around 1997 or so. Supposedly it’s a proprietary version of DOS, IIRC.
So does anyone know what the proper mount command might be? It’s not a huge deal, but if anyone knows offhand, I would love to be able to read the files on this floppy. Thanks in advance!
Well you can only mount something if the kernel has a driver for the filesystem in question. And as you say, it might be a proprietary filesystem. However assuming the floppy has no block errors, you can make an image of the floppy onto a file and then examine that to your heart’s content. Assuming a standard 1440k floppy (which isn’t for certain either), it’s just:
The conv=noerror,sync replaces unreadable blocks with zeros so that at least the output image is the same size, even if some blocks are not readable, important if directory entries point to block number, otherwise bad blocks would throw the numbering out of sync. At the end of the copy you should have a file that’s 1.44MB and you would then have to find some program to decode it.
That command also works for PC floppies of course, and the image can be manipulated with mtools. E.g.
BTW, I just did a little searching. If the floppy disk is physically different from normal ones, then you are out of luck. Also the floppy size may be 2.88MB, which requires a different drive.