RE: VFAT.XFS versus MagiC

[Jo Even Skarstein <Jo.Even.Skarstein@ifi.ntnu.no>]

On Tue, 26 Aug 1997, Petr Stehlik wrote:

> > Adding VFAT-compatibility to the TOS fs should be quite easy, VFAT is
> > identical to FAT except for the extra entries in the FAT-table (For
> > the long filenames).
> 
> yes, that's what I & sven say here, too.

So if I've understood this correctly, it should be quite possible to
write a VFAT XFS. This would only work on TOS-partitions and floppies
though.

BUT, when this XFS is written it should work instantly on big
DOS-partitions/VFAT32 as soon as there exist a driver for these.

IMHO one should start with the "easy" part (The VFAT XFS) and get it
working, and then move on from there. After all, a lot of people would
probably be happy to be able to read/write VFAT-floppies or use VFAT
on their TOS-partitions.

> > Forgive me if I'm not making sense here (I'm quite ignorant at this
> > field.), but a VFAT xfs shouldn't be harder to write than e.g. the
> > MinixFS xfs, unless the problem is that Rwabs() can't read all (or
> > none at all) sectors on "big" (>32Mb) DOS-partitions.
> 
> Again, this was the reason of writting my yesterday's mail: you can't 
> read sectors on DOS partitions. That's why XFS is useless.

Not even with HD-Driver installed? I believe both MagiC and BigDOS
needs HD-Driver to be able to read big DOS-partitions, it looks
logical (at least to me, but then I'm totally ignorant about low-level
stuff like this.) that it should be quite possible to do this under
MiNT as well.


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** Jo Even Skarstein    http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~josk/
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