Date   : Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:40:09 +0000
From   : "Ian Wolstenholme" <BBCMailingList@...>
Subject: Re: Warning: Sad case on list!

I wonder what the problem is with your MDFS and floppy discs.  I have never
had any trouble with mine.  I use a standard BBC type Viglen double drive powered
from the MDFS and it works fine.  I did have trouble with using 3.5" discs at one
point, it really didn't like them very much but no such trouble with 5.25".

Best wishes,


Ian

----- Original Message -----
From: jgh@... (Jonathan Graham Harston)
To:  bbc-micro@...
Sent: 13 Mar 2006 21:56:45 +0000
Subject: [BBC-Micro] Re: Warning: Sad case on list!

Message-ID: <20060312194110.4BDA.CHRIS@...>
 
Chris Johns <chris@...> wrote:
> > 1.  Larger disc partitions
> > 2.  More than 8 partitions per physical drive
> > 3.  More than 8 hard disc partitions available when the MDFS is running
> > 4.  SCSI ID 5 & 6 available so more hard drives could be attached.
> 
> I have a ~240MB drive on my MDFS which is plenty for my needs and then
> some, however, it would be nice it it was just one partition, rather
> than the 4 it's currently in.
 
The hardest part of the above is larger partitions. The MDFS uses
1024-byte logical sectors, addressed by a 16-bit sector number.
65536*1024=64M. It will require the difficult task of finding more
space in the directory blocks and the file allocation tables (see
http://mdfs.net/Docs/Comp/Disk/Format/SJ/MDFS)
 
>From an initial look at the code some time ago it should be fairly
easy to set the partition size to &FFFF*1024 instead of &F000*1024.
I would have done it by now if I had: a) a modded MDFS with
working floppy or b) a modded spare MDFS. My "big" MDFS doesn't
like floppy disks, and my spare MDFSs don't have the required mods
to recognise large disks in the first place.
 
-- 
J.G.Harston - jgh@...                - mdfs.net/User/JGH
BBC BASIC for Windows and Internationalisation
  See http://mdfs.net/Software/BBCBasic/Windows/ProgTips