Re: Desktop Icons

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:

>Rich Hare writes ...
>> 
>> I've got a new small problem with my IIGS.
>> I have a Bluedisk card which has worked very well for years, and still
>> does.  I changed a few things around last month, and now have a new
>> problem.  Previously, when I put a MSDOS disk in the drive, and pushed
>> "Control" to poll the drive, the disk would appear on the desktop and I
>> could "drag and drop" to copy from the icon.  (The MSDOS FST is read
>> only)
>> 
>> Now, the icon doesn't appear on the desktop.  The Watson utilities (and
>> others as well, such as Utilityworks, find the disk just fine; it just
>> doesn't appear on the desktop.
>
>     You can always try scrapping the file named "Desktop" in the ICONS/
folder (on
>the boot partition and/or other partitions).  Desktop gets changed from time
to
>time by programs which want to install their icon(s). Sometimes the result is
to
>corrupt Desktop.
>
>     A corrupted Desktop file is a fairly common problem for System 6 users
who
>routinely add new applications and start them directly from the Finder. It's
>effects can range from undetectable (almost) up through missing icons and
crashing
>the system. (Really, the Finder should have some way of validating an icon
input to
>Desktop from an application. Either it doesn't or the check is inadequate.)

Good advice if it were the Desktop file, but that's not his problem.
ProDOS, HFS, and MS-DOS disks use the same icon.  The
icon shows up when a ProDOS or HFS disk is inserted but not
an MS-DOS disk.  Therefore, the problem is not with the Desktop
file.

The problem is the MS-DOS FST not being able to deal with
Windows 95 (and Windows 98) long file names.  Whenever
this feature is used on ANY file on the disk, the disk will
become invisible to the MS-DOS FST (or rather invisible to
the Finder for purposes of mounting an icon when it polls
the MS-DOS FST).  Even if you later delete all the files with
long file names, it will NOT fix the disappearing icon problem.

So use Windows 95 or Windows 98 features when saving
to a floppy means the floppy will only be accessable using
MUG!