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From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: CD-ROM for the Amiga
Keywords: CD-ROM file formats
Message-ID: <1895@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 25 Aug 90 22:34:49 GMT
Lines: 46
Return-Path: <lpami!lphillips>
To: van-bc!rnews

In <1199@tardis.Tymnet.COM>, jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith) writes:
>In article <1885@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) writes:
>>Well, it can (and should) be made compatible with existing data disks, as far
>>as the file system format is concerned; that is, it can be made conformant to
>>the High Sierra or ISO 9660 specs.
>
>Question: Does the CD-ROM file system look exactly like an AmigaDOS file
>system, or is it just somewhat compatible?

Well, depends on what you mean by the 'CD-ROM' file system. If you are
referring to the High Sierra or ISO-9660 file system, then no, it does not look
much like the Amigados file system. Bear in mind that a file system could be
written to be Amigados file system compatible, and to do any necessary fiddling
to make it work with the different block sizes of CD-ROM.

>After seeing how Sun is distributing SunOS-4.1 on CD-ROM, I get the impression
>that the standard for CD-ROMs have a different limitation in the length of
>a file name, have a more restricted set of characters allowed in a file name,
>and have a limitation on the number of periods in a file name.  Also, the
>standard format of CD-ROM for MS-DOS and Macintosh don't handle Unix
>protection bits, much less the AmigaDOS protection bits.

It looks like a file name may have up to 31 character, which may contain a file
name, a  file name extension, and a file version number. This means we may
have two separators. I know, brain dead. I haven't looked at the ISO-9660 spec
yet, so we can only hope someone saw fit to make this a little more versatile.

>In other words, to store the contents of an entire Amiga floppy on CD-ROM and
>preserve all the AmigaDOS attibutes requires using something like ZOO or
>LHARC.  Not all of the files in the current Fred Fish collection could be
>stored on CD-ROM as simple files because some of the file names have illegal
>characters.

Both volume and file attributes are provided for. Again, an Amiga specific
CD-ROM need not be in High Sierra or ISO-9660 format.

-larry

--
It is not possible to both understand and appreciate Intel CPUs.
    -D.Wolfskill
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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