In the FAT16 discussion I'm reading a lot of comments about how to read
32bit sector numbers. Egor proposed a solution based on the fact of specify
value FFFF in the sector number field of the standard sector read/write
call, and to specify the actual sector number in other way. And someone
replied that this is a good idea, but can have some problems.
Well, stop worrying about this: the way designed by Egor is the correct
way, and we will have no problems. Why? Well, easy: this is exactly the way
used by Microsoft in MS-DOS 4 and higher, and it seems to work huh?
About reading "actual" FFFF sector: you think that any existing program
will never try to read this sector? Think on this: the maximum size of a
disk never equals to 32768K exactly. This size implies 4096 clusters with
16 sectors each one. But as you know, maximum cluster number is #FF6; refer
to a message from Egor:
>FF7 and FFF7 means "defective sectors in cluster"
>FF8 thru FFF and FFF8 thru FFFF mean "last cluster in chain"
>Actualy FFF and FFFF are used but let us stick to the standard.
So, summarising: sector FFFF will never be accessed by old programs and the
Egor way (that is, the MS-DOS way) must not give any problem.
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Konami Man - AKA Nestor Soriano (^ ^)v - Itsumo MSX user
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/9797/msx.htm
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ#: 18281450
"In Windows 98, 3.000 found failures of W95 have been corrected..."
Translation: 3.000.000 not found failures continue without being corrected...
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