Re: firmware for the PseudoDisk

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Alex Freed wrote:
> "Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in message
> doKdnQwUuPjdo8_YnZ2dnUVZ_hydnZ2d@comcast.com">news:doKdnQwUuPjdo8_YnZ2dnUVZ_hydnZ2d@comcast.com...
>
> > Apple's SCSI cards implement a Mac-style partition table.
> >
> > CFFA implements "hard" partitions set by the controller, with
> > no partitioning table.
>
>
> How do you normaly put stuff on the CFFA card? On the Apple itself,
> like a hard drive?

Either on an Apple or on a PC using CiderPress.

If I copy a CF partition to an .hdv file using CiderPress,
then an emulator on the PC acts just like my real Apple
using the CFFA card.

The fact that I can back up my Apple CF "hard disk" in seconds
to a .hdv image on the PC is one of the *huge* wins of using
the CFFA with CiderPress.  Finally, backups are painless!

> > > Same way as Apple emulators use .hdv images on my NTFS drives.
> >
> > OK, so the ProDOS file system is embedded in a FAT file.
> >
> > This approach essentially replaces Apple partitions with
> > FAT files, so only a single FAT partition is needed, with a
> > file for each Apple "partition".
>
>
> Exactly. Which is great for using a PC to fill up the card.

Of course, with CiderPress, you can copy those .hdv images
to real (Apple) partitions using a PC.

> > Of course, the FAT files
> > may not remain physically contiguous, so multiple levels of
> > block mapping are required (Apple to FAT and FAT to physical).
>
>
> It's relatively easy and fast to map ProDOS image's ralitive sectors
> to phisical sectors on the SD card. For nibble mode we only need
> a list of pointers to 13 blocks that represent a "track".

I guess I keep thinking in 32MB ProDOS partition terms...
Or even bigger HFS partitions.

-michael

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