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From: nigel@minster.UUCP (nigel)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16
Subject: Hard disk limitations
Message-ID: <755@minster.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Apr-86 17:28:40 EST
Article-I.D.: minster.755
Posted: Tue Apr 22 17:28:40 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Apr-86 06:24:02 EST
Organization: University of York, England
Lines: 47

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I have an pre-production Atari 20 Mb hard drive, and am now starting to
encounter problems. The documentation says to be careful not to copy too
many files at once (no limit suggested), and to not have more than about 40
subdirectories across all drives. This slightly worried me. When I created
my 20th yesterday, I could not run any application, let alone copy files.
The former generated the error "couldn't find application", and the latter
"not enough memory to run that application". These I reckon are wide of the
mark, as GEM is not expecting the underlying operating system to fold up,
so guesses. When I tried to copy files using the command interpreter, I got
two bombs (bus error), but the interpreter survived to accept another command.
When I removed the 20th directory, everything worked again. Conclusion -
GEMDOS is broken. According to show info, I have only 1 Meg of the disk used.
According to show (using command.tos), I have used about 4Meg, which is more
believable.  Without subdirectories, I couldn't find my way about more than
about 1 Meg anyway. I need subdirectories. I might also mention that this
problem has been rumbling away, because about 3 directory creations ago,
the ISV assembler stopped working. It either couldn't find the irritating
AS68SYMB.DAT, or created as many temporary files as it could before running
out of directory entries.....

Arrggghhh. Thinks - "this is ludicrous - I wish I had time to write my own
operating system, which doesn't pale at the the task of handling directories."
First year students who've just learnt about operating systems might also be
wondering what's so difficult.

My system is a 1 meg upgraded 520st with OS roms, 1 floppy, and one hard drive.

Why has this happened at 20 and not 40 subdirectories?
Why is 40 a limitation anyway?
Is this a known problem?
Have I really got to have huge directories?
Any suggestions?
Please!

Nigel Roles
Department of Computer Science
University of York

..!ukc!minster!nigel