Re: keeping TOS-FS or not?

[Jo Even Skarstein <joska@nuts.edu>]

On Tue, 26 May 1998, Martin-Eric Racine wrote:

> The only thing missing is a TOS laptop with 256-color graphics
> and advanced CPU, perhaps something like a laptop Milan?

Why not buy a Powerbook? A dedicated TOS portable would be atleast
twice as expensive as the most expensive Powerbook...

>  >If so, I think the old TOS FS can always be included by a compiler
>  >switch. I.e. if it gets removed, what didn't happen yet.
> 
> Again, /etc/fstab serves a purpose, why not use it?
[...]
> What's the point of having an fstab if nobody's gonna use it?
> We might as well revert to SingleTOS then...

Because fstab is a relic from unix, and is not really suited for MiNT.
E.g. what if you have a Zip, with some TOS-disks, some VFAT-disks,
some HFS-disks... Get the picture? MiNT has a much better way of
detecting file-systems than the ancient (and static) fstab-way, it's
also a lot easier to use a couple of MiNT-calls to determine what FS
you're dealing with than reading and parsing a text-file.

The only real use I can see for fstab ATM is to keep the rc.boot
script happy, new tools that fixes TOS/VFAT-partitions should be too
smart to rely on this file...


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