Apple II IDE Interface software : your opinions and suggestions welcome

["Stephane Guillard" <stephane.guillard@steria.com>]

Hi,

Those who are interested in the latest release of the software for my
IDE interface can go to http://s.guillard.free.fr where in the Apple
II IDE page there is now a link to C source and 4 binary releases
(including various levels of functionalities).

The biggest binary will enable navigating in the FAT dir tree, create
/ delete files, change their attribute, view their contents, write
into them etc. (it's funny to actually manipulate a volume created on
the PC, add files etc. and then plug the HDD in a PC and see all has
worked properly :-).

I've done 50% of the work to port back C functions to assembly (for
size and speed). Please refer to the main() source in the C file to
know which functionalities are available in the various binaries
(which are only recompliations of the same project, with various
defines).

Now I wonder how to split things.

The functionalities could be split this way :

- minimal feature set goes to ROM. Able to list / navigate dir
tree, load / save / execute a binary file. This is sufficient to store
something to the hard disk, and run it. It enables loading something
from a DOS3.3 or ProDOS floppy and store it to the hard disk, but if
this software calls DOS3.3 or ProDOS, its calls wil lgo to floppy, not
hard disk (thus the patches mentioned below)

- RAM-loadable extension API (mainly the POSIX-like API already
done, which includes the full fcntl set : open(), creat(), read(),
write() and more, see in the C source), which is a necessary support
layer for the next 2 parts

- external command set, loaded from the hard disk itself (rm, mkdir, rmdir, ls, cp, mv, cat, od, etc.),
relying on the extension API

- patches for the most used features of DOS3.3 and ProDOS, so that
software saved to the hard disk, which manipulate files through DOS or
ProDOS, can be completely operated from the hard disk.

I will anyway split the software in the following parts in the next
days, and this is where I would appreciate your opinions :

- ROM part. I can use 2 K + 256 bytes.

- relocatable residentable RAM part. How much RAM can be eaten by this
one so that it does not interfer too much with DOS3.3 ? with ProDOS ?
Which base addresses would be nice under DOS3.3 ? ProDOS ?

- DOS 3.3 and ProDOS patches. Various options could be done here, from
having a patched DOS 3.3 or ProDOS kernel which loads from the hard
disk, but which is not able anymore to operate with floppies
(easiest), to patching these in such a way that the hard disk
operating system intercepts the calls to DOS / ProDOS, recognizes
something in the file name which indicates hard disk, and subsequent
calls to this file are redirected to HDD etc. What would you
appreciate / require / suggest ?

Regarding the external command set, there is no restriction because
they will be ordinary executables relying on the extension API.

Thank you for your
answers, which should be made public in this newsgroup so that we can
consolidate into a specification which suits all needs.

Regards,

-- 
St�phane GUILLARD  - stephane.guillard@steria.com
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