Sibayan,
I am not sure whether the FAT related question was directed specifically
towards Indra . I attempt to give a kludgy answer which can sure
kindle a flame war.If the question *was* meant only for Indra (maybe you
want to test whether the list admin is really worth his post or not ;) ,
I am sorry to have spoken.
You asked:
>Tell me whether a driver depends upon the FAT.
NO. A device driver is a software which helps the operating system to
interact with _a_ specific hardware or a genre of hardware devices (say
you ISA network card or PCI Video card) . The device driver (dd) can be
looked upon as an integral part of the OS (think Windows) or as plug-ins
which can be loaded at runtime (Linux modules) This is not to say that
Linux doesn't have integrated drivers in the Kernel. So basically a device
driver is a software ( a program ) and that is independent of the form of
storage.. ie whether you store them in punched cards or opto-electronic
crystals (sorry for jharring funda ). Needless to say, that if you store
the program , say as a text file, it will NOT depend on what FAT you are
using .. NTFS, HPFS, OS/2, 32 bit, 16 bit. However, FAT seems to be
specifically used in MS Operating systems and one fine evening you may
find that the word has been trademarked. Exercise caution.
In *NIX || *nux ( because theoritically Linux does not belong to the
regular expr. *NIX), the concept of a FAT is somewhat different.. I would
refer you to "The Design of the Unix (TM) Operating System" by Maurice J
Bach. I do not wish to enter into mode_criticise_FAT but for certain
reasons DOS FAT is not the ideal file system.
So, finally A DEVICE DRIVER DOESN't DEPEND on the FILESYSEM or FAT.
The guy who wrote the above part of the letter is a lunatic and has been
talking through his head in a myopic fashion. My apologies. I shall try
to track down how he hacked into my system. A DEVICE DRIVER COULD
DEFINITELY BE DEPENDENT ON THE FAT. Consider the mounting of various
partitions in a Linux filesystem. The root could be ext2 (/)and you could
have your windows partition with a 32 bit FAT (/dosc) mounted along with
an NTFS (/dosd) partition. Now if you want to copy a file from the Win 98
to NT partition you type
cp /dosc/user/foo.c /dosd/ntappdir
So the OS has to "read" the file from the Win partition using a "driver"
program which maops the OS read calls for the Win FAT and then
another driver "writes" the data to the NT partition. So these drivers
have to be aware of to what FAT they are writing.
So, in conclusion.. Generally a driver is FAT independent but if it is
dealing with the filesystem itself then it has to have detailed knowledge
about FAT and data storage.
Regards
Shourya
_______________________________________________________________
Shourya Sarcar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <Tel:91-033-4710477>
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Jadavpur University Calcutta, India 700 032
All the world's a stage..
And I am acting tonight
C - the difference : http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
It was on Sat, 22 Jan 2000, Mr. Sibayan Das. typed in this..
>Hi! Indra
>
>Coupla days back I was visitin' ilug-cal homepage. But I couldn't get all
>the pages. Waz up with that?
>
>Tell me whether a driver depends upon the FAT.
>
>Sibayan
>
>
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