Re: Disassembling an FST...

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Paul Schultz <pschultz@med.wayne.edu> wrote:

>It has been well documented here on csa2 in the past that the reason
>there is no FST specs/docs is that the interface between the FSTs and
>GS/OS was always modified whenever there was a new FST introduced.

Or so Nathan always claimed.  ;-)

>Also, there were some non-standard hooks into GS/OS. The bottom line
>was that things weren't as pretty and modular as the GS/OS reference
>would have you believe.

Theoretically.  However, the HFS FST actually does work if you
put install it on System 5.0.4.  Apple made some very scary
warnings about doing it, but I have done so in emergency
situations without harm.

>At one time years ago, there was talk of disassembling one of the 
>more stable FSTs (i.e., ProDOS) to see how things were done and also
>use it to write a new "ProDOS+" type of FST which would add some
>reasonable (do-able) features.
>
>But, like so many things with the Apple II in the last 5 years
>nothing ever came of this. Too bad...would have been nice.

Breaking the 32MB limit for the ProDOS FST would be
cool and would it not be possible?  MS-DOS had such
a limit (under the FAT file system) and they broke it after
DOS 4, I think.