<OT> Compaq file system??

[Kurt Wall]

Feigning erudition, Tony Alfrey wrote:
% Sorry about the off-topic question, but my wife will be grateful for 
% possible help.
% My wife has a conventional 3 1/2" floppy that she formatted eons ago on 
% an old Compaq computer.  She says
% a) the old Compaq would read floppies formatted on an IBM PC.
% b) floppies formatted on her Compaq could not be read on other PCs.
% 
% Sounds to me like a poorly-aligned floppy drive but maybe it's something 
% more subtle.

Possibly. Can you dd the contents off the floppy into a file and then
poke through the file looking for the data that you want? 

$ dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/some/darn/file

% My box says it can't recognize the file system on the floppy (when using 
% the 'auto' option in the mount command).  Is there any possibility that 
% the old Compaq had some wierd file system for floppies (obviously a 
% question for the old farts among the list  ;-)  ).

I recall that early Compaqs had all manner of proprietary goober about
their systems, such as BIOS data stored in special sectors on the 
hard disk, components *only* available from Compaq, and so forth.

Kurt
-- 
God is real, unless declared integer.