Date   : Wed, 02 Dec 1987 16:59:51 GMT
From   : tikal!sigma!bill@beaver.cs.washington.edu (William Swan)
Subject: Re: Z80DOS, PZDOS and datestamp formats

In article <8711301746.AA22038@newton.arpa> bridger%rcc@RAND-UNIX.ARPA
(Bridger Mitchell) writes:
>There is a resurgence of interest in CP/M 2.2-compatible bdos's;
>at least two are under active development and not yet stable:  Z80DOS
>and PZDOS.
>[...]
>DateStamper includes full create/modified/accessed times and dates.  But
>it requires the most space -- 1.0 to 1.25 K.
>
>The cp/m 3 and z80dos formats use up 1/4th of the directory entries,
>[...]
>It would be desirable to standardize on a single format for all of
>cp/m 2.2; that would enable all of us to use all of the
>timestamp-featured utilities that already exist (directory, filecopy,
>disk catalog, unix-make, for DateStamper) and are being developed, and
>to exchange fully-compatible disks.  But the jury is still out on
>whether these dos's will evolve to that point...
>--bridger mitchell

I heartily agree with the desire for a uniform time-stamp mechanism.

I just brought up P2DOS in the past couple weeks so I could get this feature.
Although, as Bridger points out, it uses 1/4 of the directory entries, I find
I usually run out of disk space with only half of the entries used. If I'm
desperate for directory entries and don't care about timestamps (as I was last
night when I had to re-assemble SYSLIB3), I can always clear the directory.

Giving up 1-1.25K, as DateStamper requires, is a bigger issue for me. After my
years with a CP/M manufacturer (*years* ago!) I got perhaps unduly sensitive
to the issue of TPA. Some of the utilities I use like as much TPA as they
can get (what I hear of Wordstar 4.0, of which I am anxiously awaiting 
delivery, puts it in this category). I, for one, am reluctant to reduce the
available TPA on my system, especially since I already have the feature
without.

On the other hand, if the DateStamper mechanism were to become the standard,
I'd have less trouble justifying it. If the {P2,Z80,PZ}DOS reflects the CP/M-3
system, though, I'm not sure which system gets my nod.

I don't know much of DateStamper (is this a commercial product, Bridger, and
if so how much and where?), nor how it hooks into the system. The idea that it
is 808{0,5} compatible is great, it doesn't limit this feature to us Z80 users.
How is it destructively incompatible with the CP/M-3 method?

Also, are utilities written using CP/M-3's timestamp mechanisms usable with
P2DOS? I seem to recall somebody wrote a make utility for CP/M-3, for example.
I presume they wouldn't work with DateStamper.


-- 
William Swan  {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!sigma!bill