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Re: The AOD Virtual Partition Specification - First Draft - 2016-04-04 -

From James Harris <james.harris.1@gmail.com>
Newsgroups alt.os.development
Subject Re: The AOD Virtual Partition Specification - First Draft - 2016-04-04 -
Date 2016-04-04 22:35 +0100
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <ndumhn$o7k$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References <nducbn$lol$1@gioia.aioe.org>

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On 04/04/2016 19:38, Mike Gonta wrote:
> The AOD Virtual Partition Specification
> An alt.os.development Community Project
> - First Draft - 2016-04-04 -
>
> The Virtual Partition  makes  it  possible  for  a  hobbyist
> system to manage  a  FAT32  volume  as  easily  as  a  FAT12
> floppy  disk  image.   Restricting  access  to   the    root
> directory combined with the  small  sizes  of  the  FAT  and
> root directory tables, resulted in a  simple  FAT12  driver.

Can you quantify the difference - say in lines of code for the source or 
bytes for the object code - between a full-and-complete FAT32 driver and 
an equivalent driver for your proposed structure?

If I may make some criticisms (which are intended to be helpful, of 
course) of your proposal I would say:

The description needs to begin not with what a VP does but what it _is_.

For example, "A VP is a specific way to lay out the initial disk blocks 
of a FAT32 volume, as detailed below. Organising the beginning of the 
volume in the way suggested allows the software which accesses it to be 
reduced in size by x%. This, in turn, allows the driver software to be 
included in a volume boot sector which, at 512 bytes, is not large 
enough to work with a generic FAT32 volume."

"This is often better than having the volume boot sector load a FAT32 
driver because ...."

Is "virtual partition" the best term? It seems more to be a specific 
type of FAT32. Perhaps a name like "FAT32mg" would be clearer? (Lots of 
things could be called virtual partitions.)

-- 
James Harris

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Thread

The AOD Virtual Partition Specification - First Draft - 2016-04-04 - "Mike Gonta" <mikegonta@gmail.com> - 2016-04-04 14:38 -0400
  Re: The AOD Virtual Partition Specification - First Draft - 2016-04-04 - James Harris <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2016-04-04 22:35 +0100
    Re: The AOD Virtual Partition Specification - First Draft - 2016-04-04 - "Mike Gonta" <mikegonta@gmail.com> - 2016-04-04 18:51 -0400

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