Help identifying an older file system

[Spork Schivago]

Hello,

I found a floppy disc, it's a 1.44MB 3.5" floppy. My Linux box doesn't understand it. It had a sector or two that was bad but I was successfully able to make an image using ddrescue. file cannot identify it. I open it in a hex editor and I see the words:

XEROX 1.44MB

Can someone help me identify what file system this is and what type of system used it? There's a number on the disc, 1995. I think this might provide a clue. Any thoughts?

[stj]

Re: Help identifying an older file system

upload the image.

[goontron]

Re: Help identifying an older file system

Maybe Xenix Fs? Used by early interactive Unix 386 and the like. I think FreeBSD supports it...

[SteveNielsen]

Re: Help identifying an older file system

Perhaps it was formatted on a big Xerox copier/scanner/network-printer machine. We had some around ten+ years ago at a job. Nobody ever used the floppy drives once they figured out how to just shoot it across the network. I don't recall what file-system(s) it used/supported.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help identifying an older file system

upload the image.

I don't want to upload the image because it may contain sensitive information. Using a hex editor and loading the image, just looking through it, it appears to be using ASCII as the character set, not EBCDIC. It appears to contain shipping information for a larger company. Account information, addresses, etc. I'm not sure if credit card numbers are in there or not (I'd hope not). No idea where or how I acquired it. I've had it for years. I remember having it back in high school. Wasn't able to read it back then but didn't know enough about PCs. Just kept it all these years and ran into when I was looking for some older disks I had info on.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help identifying an older file system

Maybe Xenix Fs? Used by early interactive Unix 386 and the like. I think FreeBSD supports it...

I believe there's a Xenix FS module for Linux. My system should be setup to autoload FS modules on demand (ie, when I try to mount the image, it should be able to load the appropriate module). I'll check the kernel source to see if the Xenix FS module is enabled or not. If it isn't used so much anymore, it might be in the odd ball section. What's kinda weird is file cannot detect it. Usually, file is pretty good with stuff like this.

I contacted Xerox a while back asking them if they knew anything about the FS but they never responded.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help identifying an older file system

Perhaps it was formatted on a big Xerox copier/scanner/network-printer machine. We had some around ten+ years ago at a job. Nobody ever used the floppy drives once they figured out how to just shoot it across the network. I don't recall what file-system(s) it used/supported.

Would these copier / scanner / network-printer machines store the data, perhaps a spreadsheet or something, on the disk before doing whatever they did with the data? I really appreciate you guys providing information on this older technology for me. I was still in middle school back in 95. That was the year I started getting into Linux. Had no idea what a mainframe was or even a server, let alone a fundamental understanding of a file system. I just knew in Linux, we used ext2, in DOS, we used FAT16.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help identifying an older file system

I'd scan an image, but right now, my wife's laptop is down. I'm using a customers PC. Jessica's hard drive should come tomorrow. Anyway, a little more info..on the disc, the metal part that slides open, has stuff printed on it:

[B]XEROX[/B]
Formatted
Micro Diskette
Double Sided
High Density
Reorder No.
[B]8R3827[/B]

The paper that the person wrote on, it says:

7080 Pgh Inv.
PittsShip 1995

So it appears that Xerox actually shipped these discs, preformatted. Didn't they try to sell a home PC back in the day but failed miserably or something? It was very similar to another system, I want to say it was similar to a TSR-80 or something like that and not too many people where impressed. I highly doubt this could be from something really old like that though, being 1.44MB in size.