Re: IIgs GS/OS AppleTalk question - volume size

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Blake Patterson <blake@blakespot.com> wrote:

> I have a ROM 3 IIgs w/ the latest version of GS/OS.  I established a
> LocalTalk link to my G4 Mac (using a Stealth Serial Port, an oldschool
> serial addon).  I can browse my G4's massive drives with ease.
> 
> I tried to get this going on my Mac Plus w/ System 6.0.5 and found
> that on any but my smallest (2GB) partition, the Mac Plus will bomb on
> selection of that drive.
> 
> I found ... that there is a 2GB limit on most AppleShare protocols.  Why
> can the IIgs deal it this easily while the Mac fail??  I suppose GS/OS is
> more recent than System 6.0.5??

Yes.  The final IIgs system release (6.0.1) was in 1992 (or was it
'93?).  System 7 for the Mac came out in 1990, so 6.0.5 would have been
1989 or 1990.

The volume size might not be the real issue - it might be the amount of
free space.  With Mac clients of the 7.5.x era, the server will appear
to have a maximum of 2 GB of free space.  Later versions were able to
correctly report larger amounts of free space.  I assume that a later
version of the AppleShare protoocl added a larger field to report the
free space correctly.

System 7.5.3 on a PCI PowerMac will support local volume sizes up to 2
TB.  I'm not sure what limit applied in earlier versions and on earlier
machines, but it might have been as low as 4 GB or even 2 GB.

It wouldn't surprise me if System 6 on the Mac is limited to supporting
volume sizes of 2 GB, so it dies a horrible death if any volume is
larger than that.  The Mac traditionally treated all numbers as signed
integers, so a volume size between 2 and 4 GB may appear to be a
negative number.  Larger values may have been truncated to 32 bits.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz