Re: Seagate ST255N [20 Meg SCSI] Wanted

[David Wilson <david@uow.edu.au>]

sca <no@spam.com> writes:
>Thinking about that.  What is it that PREVENTS us from using larger 
>volumes?  Why can't we hack GS/OS or ProDOS to use more of the hard 
>drives? Why is it practically impossible?

GS/OS can already use larger volumes (they just have to be formatted as HFS).

ProDOS 8 can only use 32MB per volume and 14 volumes online at once. These
limits were set in stone when the filesystem was designed (SOS on Apple ///)
using 16 bit block numbers (65536 blocks of 512 bytes = 32MB) and when ProDOS
was designed to use the slot and drive (3 + 1 bits = 4 bits = 16 volumes [less
two as slot 0 is not supported]). If you change any of these limits then
existing ProDOS applications will not work so you can no longer call the OS
ProDOS.

There is nothing to stop you writing your own O/S which does not have these
limits - the only problems are the time it will take you and the lack of
software to run on it...
-- 
David Wilson  School of IT & CS, Uni of Wollongong, Australia