Frederick Bruckman writes:
> I believe the complaint here may be about the _backup_ fat, which is
> near the end of the partition.

Thanks to all the folks that sent private encouragements.  The win98
fs crapola was indeed at offset 63 sectors.  It is mounted as we
speak.

I had hacked fsck_msdos to be more of a probing tool and report back
on any problems.  The backup fat was at offset 6 sectors, and did
indeed have a few bytes that differed from the primary.  I don't know
if this is uninitialized data (sloppy sloppy Mr Bill!) or if this is a
few bytes of the satanic message "Bill is dead; I killed him".  Anyone
know what these bytes do?

# ./fsck_msdos-wsr -n /dev/wd0h
** /dev/wd0h
Backup at: 6
0x020: 0x61 != 0x01
0x021: 0x97 != 0x2f
0x022: 0x5e != 0xbd
0x044: 0x00 != 0x14
backup doesn't compare to primary bootblock
** Phase 1 - Read and Compare FATs
** Phase 2 - Check Cluster Chains
** Phase 3 - Checking Directories
** Phase 4 - Checking for Lost Files
Next free cluster in FSInfo block (2) not free
fix? no
15285 files, 889132 free (222283 clusters)

Byte offsets below listed are with byte 0 as first byte of sector 0.

primary:
00007e00  eb 58 90 4d 53 57 49 4e  34 2e 31 00 02 08 20 00  |.X.MSWIN4.1... .|
00007e10  02 00 00 00 00 f8 00 00  3f 00 f0 00 3f 00 00 00  |........?...?...|
00007e20  61 97 5e 00 40 2f 00 00  00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00  |a.^.@/..........|
          ^  ^  ^
00007e30  01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00007e40  80 00 29 e4 00 63 31 4e  4f 20 4e 41 4d 45 20 20  |..)..c1NO NAME  |
                      ^ 
00007e50  20 20 46 41 54 33 32 20  20 20 fa 33 c9 8e d1 bc  |  FAT32   .3....|
00007e60  f8 7b 8e c1 bd 78 00 c5  76 00 1e 56 16 55 bf 22  |.{...x..v..V.U."|
00007e70  05 89 7e 00 89 4e 02 b1  0b fc f3 a4 8e d9 bd 00  |..~..N..........|

backup:
00008a00  eb 58 90 4d 53 57 49 4e  34 2e 31 00 02 08 20 00  |.X.MSWIN4.1... .|
00008a10  02 00 00 00 00 f8 00 00  3f 00 f0 00 3f 00 00 00  |........?...?...|
00008a20  01 2f bd 00 40 2f 00 00  00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00  |./..@/..........|
          ^  ^  ^
00008a30  01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00008a40  80 00 29 e4 14 63 31 4e  4f 20 4e 41 4d 45 20 20  |..)..c1NO NAME  |
                      ^ 
00008a50  20 20 46 41 54 33 32 20  20 20 fa 33 c9 8e d1 bc  |  FAT32   .3....|
00008a60  f8 7b 8e c1 bd 78 00 c5  76 00 1e 56 16 55 bf 22  |.{...x..v..V.U."|
00008a70  05 89 7e 00 89 4e 02 b1  0b fc f3 a4 8e d9 bd 00  |..~..N..........|

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang Rupprecht    <wolfgang@wsrcc.com>     http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/
DGPS signals via the Internet  http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/gps/dgps-ip.html