Re: A2 SCSI Partition Utility

[obsbedia2@aol.com (Obsbedia2)]

<< My idea is PU - a SCSI Partition Utility.
This would let you rewrite the partition table to rearrange the order of the
partitions.
ProDOS 8 only allows you to see at most 14 partitions (fewer if you're using
any other disk devices).
PU would allow you to pick which ones and also to change which one is the
boot partition.
With that feature, I might also want to allow DOS3.3, CP/M and Pascal boot
partitions as well.

This approach is probably a lot easier to implement and presents few
compatibility problems.

Anybody have any thoughts on this idea? >>


Sounds similar to an idea of mine from a few years ago.  Essentially, it would
allow the selection of banks of hard drives partions the same way AppleWork's
TO.TripleDeskTop works:  still a maximum number of volumes allowed on the
desktop (13 for the 8-bit world), but they could be any of 39 volumes online.

A few years ago, someone here told me about a hacked version of ProDOS 2.0.X
that allowed 502 files on the main directory, instead of just 51.  Sort of an
HFS type patch for the 8-bit world!  I've always thought that this would be
useful, at least for one partition (many A2 programs aren't hard drive
installable, but can be tricked into running off of a hard drive IF the
partition is renamed the same name as the original disk's volume name--nice,
but with a 51-file main directory limitation, it can really be done for only
one or two programs at a time).  

Same sort of advantages and disadvantages that you're discussing here:  more
files/space available, but where are the tools to manage things?  There's a
patch that allows all characters for file names, not just alphanumeric and the
period, with a letter first, of course.  I've tried it with AppleWorks, but it
works with some portions of AW, but not others.  It's this lack of
compatibility that hinders implementing great ideas like yours.
	][ Infinitum!
	`	Jay Edwards