> That's right! Or in the situation when an app Knows the final size of its > output file, WHY don't people do a random-write with zero-fill of previously > unallocated sectors the entire output file... If an error ocours then just > prompt for a new drive spec etc before true output starts... plus by creating > the file as a blank sheet it'll be properly allocated and can be read whilst > still being written to later on (For ZIP204 and RAR decompression without a > massive dictionary buffer)
Yeah, really crappy isn't it :) > Is there a team of coders laying down the code or are you to be churning this > all out on your own? If it works I'll be very impressed! Be prepared though to > compromise, it's better than being forced to give-up due to overwhelming > complexity part way through just to avoid admitting that some luxuries arn't > worth the coding involved, remember that most modern OS's that do the things > you envisage are either written in a HLL compiled language (NT,unix) or have > teams of specialist well paid coders working exclusivly on them or both! It's just me, myself and I ... although I could definitely do with some help on the network side of things *grins* Btw: the network will work with the drive running, so that will help I suppose :) > Cs> It's the former -- LBA mode, set as > Cs> part of the features register, > Cs> allows you to use 24bit (I think -- > Cs> not got the specs in front of me) > Cs> logical sector numbers to address the > Cs> hard disk. Will make it a *LOT* > Cs> easier, and also will make it a piece > Cs> of cake to convert to SCSI or > Cs> even to an IDE CD Rom drive using its > Cs> seconds based address scheme. > > I'll have get that ATA doc over on this machine and give it bloody good read.. > Plus there's a posibility that some early PeeCee oriented drives might not > implement that feature! > Also it is reported that not all IDE drives support free format tanslated > translates, some only do the ones required to get a peecee-clone talking to it > and ignore all other translate requests:-( Afraid so... the BIOS will contain some conversion routines anyway for drives which don't support it direct. > Partition table will be in cylinders though, won't it? I hope so anyway:-) It can be if you want (probably have to be now though :( ) > Cheers. > Johnathan. No probs Si
