Re: firmware for the PseudoDisk

["PZ" <skierpaul@yahoo.com>]

All we need is a smallish (32mb?) Fat 16/32 partition thats readable by
both Windows/Macs and by Peter Watson's utilities (or the MSDOS FST if
you're willing to put up with filename restricions).  This would be a
temporary transfer "cache" for files going between a PC and an Apple on
a CF/SD card.  The rest of the media can be ProDOS and images.

- Paul

Alex Freed wrote:
> "Andy McFadden" <fadden@fadden.com> wrote in message
> news:455278da$0$34490$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net...
> >
> > Windows maps one physical partition and multiple logical partitions to
> > drive letters.  The Windows partition map has space for 4 physical
> partitions,
>
> I think you are confusing a couple of things here.
> The Windows partition map has space for 4 PRIMARY partitions.
> Any primary partition's space in the partition table can be used by
> an EXTENDED partitions list. There may be quite a few of them.
>
> > only one of which is designated "active";
>
> That's a boot partition.
>
> > after that it's chaining "extended"
> > and "logical" partitions around.
>
> DOS and WINDOS can only use a single PRIMARY partition and
> use a number of extended partitions for logical drives.
>
> >
> > The Mac version is the most generally elegant, but the
> MicroDrive/FocusDrive
> > formats are more compact and are better suited for the specific
> application.
>
> Mac compatibility is probably not a great concern.
>
> >
> > CiderPress will access every partition that can be found.  Not always in
> > the most aesthetically pleasing manner, but it works. :-)
>
> Teach me how to. When I try to open a physical device which is my
> FAT-partitioned (out of the box) 128 MB SD card, CiderPress hangs.
> It works fine with a 32MB card that has a ProDOS image.
>
>
> > Presumably FAT32 would be employed for the larger volumes?
>
> I'd rather use FAT16 with big clusters. Come to think of it the bigger
> the better as I only need to store big images as files.
>
> >
> > Motivated individuals could use a defrag utility, and the code could
> > fast-path to direct block read routines when files are contiguous, so
> > whatever gains are to be achieved by side-stepping the filesystem are not
> > necessarily lost.
> >
> > --
> > Send mail to fadden@fadden.com (Andy McFadden) - http://www.fadden.com/
> > Fight Internet Spam - http://spam.abuse.net/spam/ & http://spamcop.net/
> 
> -Alex.