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CDROM File Formats

SCO should have been able to read the Windows CD - ISO 9660 compatible systems are supposed to just ignore Joliet extenseions (see ISO 9660 extensions). Possibly 3.2v4.2 lacked that ability - Windows 95/98 couldn't always read Rock Ridge CD's, so that's certainly possible.

Even as late as Windows 2000 there were incompatibilities and the early versions of OS X didn't create Windows readable CD's by default.

If you want portability for older systems (and don't need file system specific metadata), just use flat ISO-9660.

Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
From: djw@bts.co.uk (David Woolley)
Subject: Re: Windoze Write a SCO Readable CD
Message-ID: <FAsMEH.251@bts.co.uk> 
References: <7g1cl8$vcb$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> 
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 10:56:32 GMT

In article <7g1cl8$vcb$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
 <1900live@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>Does anybody know if it is possible to write a CD in w95 and read it in SCO ?

It is possible, however the bundled versions of some of the mastering 
software will create Joliet only images and requires a proprietory wrapper
around any raw CD image.  Older tools will produce plain ISO 9660 (8.3
file names) and at least one works with raw CD images, but the bundled
version of EZ CD Creator fails on both counts.

For long filenames, SCO Unix 3.2v4.2 needs a SCO file system image,
which can only sensibly be created on the SCO machine; this can be
written on W95 if you have a mastering tool that handles raw CD images.
v5.0.x needs Rock Ridge extensions, although I don't know that any of
the W95 mastering tools supports these.  mkisofs 12b4 (probably b5 too)
will create CD images that give long filenames under Joliet and Rock
Ridge standards at the same time.

You can use cdrecord, with SCSI recorders, to do the whole job on SCO
(although I've only used it on Linux, with ATAPI ones).

Another related post:

From: tangent@cyberport.com (Warren Young)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
Subject: Re: Making Unix files on CD-RW readable to Unix?
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 12:04:30 GMT
Message-ID: <376e8073.753839078@news.cyberport.com> 

John Phillips <jphillip@onyx.southwind.net> wrote:

>KG <akg@cwixmail.com> wrote:
>> but when I copy the files onto the CD exactly the way they came off the
>> original cd's, when I try to install them using SCO Openserver 5.02's
>> Software Manager, it won't do it because it says "unrecognizable file
>> format" and cannot read the cd.  I still have the files as originally
>
>The cd's you created with the CD-RW drive are probably not ISO-9660
>format.  They are probably Micro-$'s Joliet format.  Snail mail them
>to  me and I will re-copy them to ISO-9660 format.

Actually, Joliet _is_ ISO9660, but with extensions.  What's more
likely is that the CD needs to have the Rock Ridge extensions instead.
Both extensions serve much the same purpose: to add modern filesystem
features like long file names to the DOS-oriented ISO9660 standard.
They just achieve this in different ways, and the standards don't have
a fully overlapping feature set anyway.  Rock Ridge, for example,
supports symlinks, whereas MICROS~1 can't even spell symlink.

If there are TRANS.TBL files in each of the CD's directories, you know
the original disk was created with the Rock Ridge extensions.  IIRC,
Adaptec Easy CD Creator doesn't support that.  You may need to grab
and use the mkisofs tool (they should work under OpenServer, but no
guarantees) to create an appropriate ISO image that you can write to a
new CD-R.  See ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/mkisofs for
this tool.

Alternatively, the Adaptec software can read a pure ISO image from an
existing CD and then write it back out without diddling with the data.
That may work best of all.

Good luck,

= Warren -- http://www.cyberport.com/~tangent/

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