I use a usb pen drive to transfer files between my Slack system and my
antique Win 98 computer which has a inkjet color printer.
Unfortunately in a fit of madness I reformatted the pen drive to
linux. Now I need to put it back in FAT format again so that the
antique can recognize it. . It is /dev/sda1. I tried
fdformat /dev/sda1
but it balks because of no format specified. The pen drive is 256mb
capacity.

John Culleton

Hallo, john@wexfordpress.com,

Du meintest am 23.07.08:

> I use a usb pen drive to transfer files between my Slack system and
> my antique Win 98 computer which has a inkjet color printer.
> Unfortunately in a fit of madness I reformatted the pen drive to
> linux. Now I need to put it back in FAT format again so that the
> antique can recognize it. . It is /dev/sda1. I tried
> fdformat /dev/sda1
> but it balks because of no format specified. The pen drive is 256mb
> capacity.

Try "fdisk"

change disk
show partitions
delete
non-DOS

Viele Gruesse
Helmut

"Ubuntu" - an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:36:19 -0700 (PDT), "john@wexfordpress.com" <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

>I use a usb pen drive to transfer files between my Slack system and my
>antique Win 98 computer which has a inkjet color printer.
>Unfortunately in a fit of madness I reformatted the pen drive to
>linux. Now I need to put it back in FAT format again so that the
>antique can recognize it. . It is /dev/sda1. I tried
>fdformat /dev/sda1
>but it balks because of no format specified. The pen drive is 256mb
>capacity.

mkdosfs /dev/sda1 ??

Or format the thing from Win98.

Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.mine.nu/

john@wexfordpress.com wrote:
> Unfortunately in a fit of madness I reformatted the pen drive to
> linux. Now I need to put it back in FAT format again so that the

mkfs -t vfat


--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

On Jul 23, 1:32 pm, Joost Kremers <joostkrem...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> j...@wexfordpress.com wrote:
> > Unfortunately in a fit of madness I reformatted the pen drive to
> > linux. Now I need to put it back in FAT format again so that the
>
> mkfs -t vfat
>
> --
> Joost Kremers joostkrem...@yahoo.com
> Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
> EN:SiS(9)

Following a montage of advice from various people I used cfdisk to
delete the existing partition and create a vfat partition, then I used
mkdosfs to make a file system and then I was more or less home free.
The Win 98 partition still did not see it (Win XP saw it fine on my
other machine) so I loaded in Slax in text only mode and was easily
able to put the file where it could be read by MSWin. Then I fired up
Win 98 and used Adobe Reader to print the pdf file.

In alt.os.linux.slackware, Joost Kremers wrote:

> john@wexfordpress.com wrote:
>> Unfortunately in a fit of madness I reformatted the pen drive to
>> linux. Now I need to put it back in FAT format again so that the
>
> mkfs -t vfat

Which assumes that /sbin/mkfs.vfat exists. IIRC, Slackware doesn't deliver
this as a default. You have to install the dosfstools package, and manually
(soft)link /sbin/mkfs.vfat to /sbin/mkdosfs. While you are at it, you
should also (soft)link /sbin/mkfs.msdos to /sbin/mkdosfs so that you can
mkfs -t msdos
as well

--
Lew Pitcher

Master Codewright & JOAT-in-training | Registered Linux User #112576
http://pitcher.digitalfreehold.ca/ | GPG public key available by request
---------- Slackware - Because I know what I'm doing. ------