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From: dyer@atari.UUcp (Landon Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16
Subject: Re: Hard disk limitations
Message-ID: <209@atari.UUcp>
Date: Thu, 24-Apr-86 13:39:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: atari.209
Posted: Thu Apr 24 13:39:11 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Apr-86 06:32:12 EDT
References: <755@minster.UUCP>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 45

In article <755@minster.UUCP>, nigel@minster.UUCP (nigel) writes:

> I have an pre-production Atari 20 Mb hard drive, and am now starting
> to encounter problems.

Aha!  Please contact Richard Frick or John Feagans, at Atari, or
Robert Katz, at Atari in Britain, for a new hard disk driver.  You
*need* it.  Right now.

> First year students who've just learnt about operating systems might
> also be wondering what's so difficult.

Tee hee.  Talk to DRI....  :-)

> Why has this happened at 20 and not 40 subdirectories?

The number is small and arbitrary.  20 is about the limit -- actually,
I suggest 16 or so.  This covers *all* directories on the hard disk.

> Why is 40 a limitation anyway?

The DOS that DRI wrote uses a form of static allocation.  It
permanently allocates structures that describe the disk hierarchy; if
you have a lot of directories, GEMDOS runs out of memory -- with
potentially disasterous results.

> Is this a known problem?

Yes.  The production 20-Megabyte hard disk driver will alleviate the
problem somewhat.  Atari is working on a more permanent solution
(actually, a couple different ones).

> Have I really got to have huge directories?

Yup.  16 of them, until you get the new driver.  Then it's 40 or 50.

> Please!

You're welcome.  (You think we /like/ this kind of problem?)

-- 

Landon Dyer		"If Business is War, then I'm a Prisoner of Business!"
Atari Corp.				"Gee, 20 mushrooms?  That's a record!"
... {hoptoad, lll-crg!vecpyr}!atari!dyer		"Quantity is Quality."