Sometimes I have the feeling that people has the head only for supporting
the glasses. And the current MSX HD interfaces panorama seems to demonstrate it.
You never asked yourself why PC guys exchange ZIP disks, hard disks and
similar without having to ask if they have the same controller? That's
because all the PC (hard)disk controllers use the same system for
partitionning: a STANDARISED method. This is the magic word.
When the first MSX HD controller appeared this method already existed since
long time ago. Then the most logical step was to use it in MSX
partitionning, with three clear advantages:
- No new design is required.
- Compatibility between different MSX HD controllers.
- Compatibility with PC computers.
Too beautiful to be true? Unluckily, yes. Instead of this, each maker used
its own partitionning system. Result: caos. And I'm asking: WHY?! I can't
undesrstand it.
Again MegaSCSI demonstrates who is the best: it uses the standarised PC
method for partitionning (although it also creates an own partitionning
table file in each partition, used by the current partition changing
program). Result? I can access to ALL the partitions of my ZIP drive from my
PC. Yes, PC assigns a drive letter to each one.
But hey, maybe it can be solved without having to trash all the existing HD
interfaces. I don't know how the HD interfaces other than MegaSCSI manages
partitions, but I think that it is enough with making a new partition
changer program for each interface, using this time the standard PC method.
The problem is that maybe it is necessary to format again the old disks with
the new partitionning method... or maybe not (depends on each concrete
interface. The standard PC method just place partitionning information
recursively on the boot sector of each partition, beginning on physical
sector 0 of the disk. Maybe it can be implemented without habing to format
again the disk).
So people having knowledge of partitionning methods on each MSX HD
interface, please think on it. You can find information about PC
partitionning in any advanced MS-DOS book.
-------------------------------------------------------
Konami Man - AKA Nestor Soriano (^ ^)Y
Itsumo MSX user
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/9797/msx.htm
This Pentium will become obsolete in 5 seconds...
4... 3... 2...
-------------------------------------------------------
****
MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put
in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the
quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
****
