On 4/23/2022 3:42 AM, richardkolacz...@hotmail.com wrote:
I am trying to setup FAT12 drives so that I can test doslfn and
doslfnMS which have been very recently updated.
I can only work via bare metal mode (usb BOOT disk is C:\ with also
partitions D:\ and E:\). To date I have created a FAT16 partition
(D:\) which both Windows and FreeDOS can recognize and work with.
I cannot find a way to reformat just the D:\ partition into a FAT12 -
neither via Windows, CMD or so far by FreeDOS. I was aiming for a 256
MB FAT12, but if this is not possible then a 32 MB FAT12 will do.
How would that have to be able to work? Logically?
FAT12 is called FAT12 because it uses 12 bits for each cluster number,
which means that you can have a maximum of 4087 clusters (8 clusters are
used up by the FAT structures itself). Given a default cluster size of
4KB on a hard drive (partition), that leaves you with a maximum
drive/partition size of a tad less than 16MB. Pre-DOS 3.0, you could
have 8KB clusters, for a maximum of 32MB drive/partition size. But that
is still a fraction of the 256MB you were trying to create. DOS 3.0 and
up would format any drive/partition larger than 16MB as FAT16.
And for trying to use long file names with FAT12, that should be
considered futile as well from the start, as the number of (root)
directory entries severely limits the number of files you could store on
such a partition. Those restrictions eased with the introduction of
FAT16 in DOS 3.0, but personally, I would not bother at all with LFN
unless you're using a FAT32 partition.
Ralf
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