Re: question on Standards for files

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On 12 Jan 2000 21:36:32 GMT, cturley2@aol.com (Cturley2) wrote:

>So, why not just settle for this ability rather than go on some endless quest
>to make a PC program that supports direct read/write format of a ProDOS floppy
>disk or media storage device?

Because having low level support to the hardware allows the emulator
to access any file system that it can deal with on that hardware.  In
the case of a 1.44M floppy drive, if you give low level access to the
drive you can then read/write ProDOS, HFS and MS-DOS disks.  I'm not
sure if you can format a 1.44M floppy with Pascal or CP/M but if you
can, you would be able to access those disks too.  In the case of a
CD-ROM drive, low level access lets you read all the formats just
listed as well as HighSierra (ISO9660).

By the way, Sweet16 and KEGS are IIgs emulators that both run on PC
hardware and both give low level access to some or even all of the
PC's drives to allow this kind of access.  In Sweet16 I have accessed
3.5" MFM floppies, IDE hard drive partitions and my IDE CD-ROM from
within the emulator.

However, in the case of an operating system that won't let you access
the hardware without getting in the way, the method you suggest might
be the only way to go.

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