Re: PRODOS file date query

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

bloomer_au wrote:
> I've got a bunch of program and text files I've been editing daily in
> Applesoft on an 800kb floppy image in Sweet16.
>
> When I catalog the disk in either 40 or 80 columns, nearly everything
> says 'NO DATE' for both modified and created dates. Yet when I catalog
> the disk with PROSEL, all the correct 2010 modification dates appear.
>
> Anyone know why they don't show up by normal cataloging?

I suspect you have a ProSel modified for Y2K by Glen Bredon.

He chose to extend the year range by extending the "year" field
in the packed date from 0..99 to 0..128, where 100 = the year 2000.
It is non-standard for this field to be > 99, so anything but his
utilities will report it as 'NO DATE'.

The "standard" scheme proposed by Apple was to move the "window"
from 1900..1999 to 1940..2039, keeping all the "year" fields in
the 00..99 range.

Since standard tools only report the 2-digit year, that approach
is backward compatible as long as you don't sort by date.

Beverly Cadieux made patches to ProSel and the ProSel Utilities
that are consistent with the Apple-recommended approach.  You may
wish to use these versions to restore consistent behavior.

-michael

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