Disassembling an FST: The Story

[Antoine Vignau <vignau@cybercable.fr>]

Hello,

Please let me tell you a story. The story of the HFS FST (I think I did
it before).

Once upon a time, there were engineers at Apple who wanted to had the
support of HFS to the
Apple IIgs system. On one side they put the HFS FST of the Macintosh, in
the middle there
was the 68000 TO 65C816 code converter and on the other side, the HFS
FST for the IIgs.

Hit the keyboard (maybe the C key for Converting), wait a short time
(because there were
good engineers and programmers, the conversion was fast).... pass 1
terminated.... pass 2
terminated.... Twenty seconds later, the FST was born.

The result is that we were able to use HFS disks on the IIgs BUT:
- there is no source code for the FST (except mine which is not
commented and Inside Mac
  volume IV is not very useful)
- the FST is bugged. Thanks for us, some guys patched it.

They lived happily ever after (no child named HFS+)

-------------------------------

The MSDOS FST:

Olivier and I have the source code. I really think that the sole person
who'll be able
to do something for it is the programmer of M.U.G. If he wants it, ask
him to contact me.

-------------------------------

The ProDOS/ProDOS+/PROFST/MegaTop/P8/ OOPS (Original OPerating file
System)

Have any other ideas?
According to me the enhanced ProDOS FST must not be an enhanced ProDOS
FST but a
new FST (follow me?). Each FST has a unique ID (GS/OS Reference),
imagine the size
of the FST if it had to handle normal partitions with newer ones (this
is what
the MSDOS FST does with 9-12... FATs)

The 32mb limit must be broken,
The 16mb may remain (have any interest in a bigger size for a limit of
8mb of ram?)
The length of filenames may be up to 31 characters long
The size of a block may remain at 512b
The number of logical blocks may be larger than 64k

The good explanation is given by two GS/OS calls (GetFileInfo and
GetdirEntry)

Do you agree with me ?

Antoine

-------------------------------

Comments welcome...

              Antoine Vignau - Olivier Zardini
                   Brutal Deluxe Software