Re: [MiNT] Partition sizes

[George Nakos <ggn@thebat.net>]

Hello Peter,

Friday, August 20, 2010, 5:42:02 PM, you wrote:

> On Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:22:43 , Miro Kropacek <miro.kropacek@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > If there really is a 2GB limit in Mint fs then can it be increased ?
>> >
>> It's probably quite painful process as this 2GB limit is from using
>> signed integers for storing file sizes. So every place where file
>> sizes are used / calculated in both mintlib and freemint must be
>> changed to something bigger (like 64-bit value) but I'm not really
>> sure if it's even possible in all cases since most (all) GEMDOS calls
>> return stuff in LONG (32-bit) and bit #31 is used as indicator for
>> error => 2 GB limit. If this would be changed, 99% of existing apps
>> would stop to work.
>>
>> Hmm, it's really bad thing this heritage from 80s...
>>
>>

> A nasty problem.

> The GEMDOS calls could be re-written but then the apps calling them
> wouldn't handle to returned 64 bit value.

> I presume this is was the same problem that Windows, MacOS and others
> have had to deal with.

> Has the Atari not had to deal with similar problems in the past ?

Who  on  Earth  has  created  a file that's >2gb meant to be used in a
Atari app?

And  to  be totally honest, I'd rather pursue the author of the app to
fix  this,  rather  than  retro-fixing  every  known  ST/TT/Falcon/etc
application  in  existence.  For  example, if you need to burn an iso,
split  it  in  1gb or even 2gb chunks and then instruct the program to
read them in succession. That's far more realistic IMHO







-- 
Best regards,
 George                            mailto:ggn@thebat.net