[no subject]

I am considering snooping the SCSI bus to see what the heck the
Digicard server is trying to do when it boots. Is it hunting for code
in the last sectors of the drive? Such stupidity certainly appears
possible, because for the most part drive formatting is not something
a school admin is supposed to be able to do. The DigiCard is really
more of a "turnkey" setup where somebody ELSE sets it up and you are
handed the working result. Any repairs appears to assume you
automatically call your "handler" to fix it for you (for big bucks
too, I guess).

There is no drive formatter on the drive itself. Formatting and
general setup may in fact require a separate system, probably unix
since there's a sticker on my drive which mentions "dd-copying". It
looks like this is geared for "paid service" whenever any sort of
maintenance is necessary. You can't normally even get write access to
the /MANDRAKE system directory directly.


I suppose I may have to reverse engineer the drive partition tables.
Fortunately this may turn out to be a very easy job, since I have the
Digicard Tech Tools which check the drive and partition tables for
"inconsistencies". Such tools must themselves know how the drive data
is laid out, so they hold the keys to the drive configuration. Also,
there is the "sector test/fix" tool, which is a BASIC program that
does raw SCSI read/write to the drive. This may be additionally useful
for figuring out how the Digicard accesses data on the drive..

Likely more to come. ;-)



Interesting text fragments from the drive in question:

Sector 7
GhostWhoLogsIn

Sector 8
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Joe sent me.
OK, come in.

Sector 11
PG.spike
A2.EMAIL MAIL.LIST

Sector 88
D-Net version 2.05, Copyright 1988

Sector 112
RPS Mod V2.00

Sector 116
RDS Mod V1.00

Sector 610
(looks like volume structure starts here, including that
all-important Mandrake system directory. so everything prior
must be Digicard/System/Reserved.)
MANDRAKE
MAND.OVL.20
DOS.VOL1.IMG
PRODOS
OVLAY.OBJ
SHELL.OBJ
MESS.OBJ
MAND.OVL.1
MAND.OVL.10
MAND.OVL.11
MAND.OVL.12
MAND.OVL.13
MAND.OVL.14

Sector 611
MAND.OVL.6B
MAND.OVL.6C
PRODOS.BOOT
PASCAL.BOOT
PRODOS.FILES
LOADER.SYSTEM
MAND.OVL.02
MAND.OVL.03
MAND.OVL.21
MAND.OVL.22
MAND.OVL.23
MAND.OVL.24
MAND.OVL.25

Sector 612
MAND.OVL.27
MAND.OVL.30
MAND.OVL.31
MAND.OVL.32
MAND.OVL.33
MAND.OVL.40
MAND.OVL.41
MAND.OVL.42
MAND.OVL.43
MAND.OVL.50
MAND.OVL.51
MAND.OVL.52
MAND.OVL.53

Sector 613
MAND.OVL.54
MAND.OVL.55
MAND.OVL.56
MAND.OVL.57
MAND.OVL.60
MAND.OVL.61
MAND.OVL.62
MAND.OVL.68
MAND.OVL.69
MAND.OVL.6A
MAND.OVL.80
SELECTOR.OBJ
MAND.OVL.5A

Sector 696
SYSTEM.SRC#SYSTEM


-Mr. Boffo


Email: mister_boffo@hotmail.com