Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!corton!laas!ralph From: ralph@laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech Subject: FATs and Formatted Floppies Message-ID: Date: 27 May 91 14:17:46 GMT Sender: news@laas.laas.fr Distribution: comp Organization: LAAS-CNRS France Lines: 35 I have tried a number of different formatters, both public and shareware. I would very much like to know *why* most of these formatters add 5 sector FATs? There are so few that propose 3 sector FATs! As I understand it, GEMDOS accepts FATs with both 12-bit and 16-bit entries. In all the floppies that I've seen, I have only seen FATs with 12-bit entries. Here are my calculations: # FAT | 12-bit || 16-bit sectors |clusters|sectors| bytes ||cluster|sectors| bytes 1 341 682 349,184 256 512 262,144 2 682 1364 698,368 512 1024 524,288 3 1023 2046 1,047,552 768 1536 786,432 4 1364 2728 1,396,736 1024 2048 1,048,576 5 1705 3410 1,745,920 1280 2560 1,310,720 6 2046 4096 2,095,104 1536 3072 1,572,864 So, other than for 1.4 Mb floppy drives, wouldn't 3 sector FATs suffice for floppies even with 84 tracks? For single-sided floppies, I suppose that one could use 1 or 2 sector FATs. Is the real reason hidden somewhere in the Developer documentation? If STs would generate 3 sector FATs, then we would not have all those FAT viruses. Just curious, -- Ralph P. Sobek Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own. ralph@laas.fr Addresses are ordered by importance. ralph@laas.uucp, or ...!uunet!laas!ralph If all else fails, try: sobek@eclair.Berkeley.EDU =============================================================================== Proud owner of a Mega 4 ST. Wishing it was a Mega STe! :-|