Re: A2 FAQ addition/update req.

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <3B9B01D2.6A7C5FB7@intergate.bc.ca>,
Wayne Stewart  <waynes@intergate.bc.ca> wrote:
>
>
>Paul Schlyter wrote:
>
>> In "ProDOS format"?  Doesn't a CD equipped Apple II read a CD in normal
>> ISO format?
>
> The hardware is more than capable but the software is the weak point. In
> GS/OS you have FSTs that let you deal with different formats but 8 bit
> programs usually only understand what the programmer allowed for. That's
> usually just DOS 3.3 or ProDOS.

DOS 3.3 isn't particularly interesting for CD-ROM's, since a DOS 3.3
volume can be max approx. 400 kBytes (the sector bitmap in the VTOC hasn't
room for more), and a CD-ROM is a little larger than that....  <g>.  If
we ignore the sector bitmap in the VTOC, next limit would be track/sector
numbers in the T/S-lists: a track and a sector is there stored in one
byte each.  And a disk with 256 tracks and 256 sectors would be 16 MBytes
large (if we assume 256-byte sectors) -- still too small for a CD-ROM.

> There was some discussion on Delphi a couple years ago about different
> programs for reading ISO 9660 or HFS CDs on 8 bit Apples. I paid a bit of
> attention to the HFS part but ignored the ISO part as I don't have a
> single ISO CD.  My reason for using ProDOS format for Apple II CDs is
> that just about any Apple II program I'm likely to boot off a hard drive
> will likely be able to access the CD.

OTOH you'll lose one big advantage by using a proprietary file system
on your CD's: portability between different computers.  Wasn't the ISO
9660 CD file system the very first file system readable both on a PC
and a Mac, for instance?



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