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From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Hard drives for an Amiga 2000
Message-ID: <2708@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Nov-87 17:16:06 EST
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.2708
Posted: Mon Nov  9 17:16:06 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Nov-87 21:29:30 EST
References: <368@tardis.cc.umich.edu>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 38

in article <368@tardis.cc.umich.edu>, mike@ronin.cc.umich.edu (Michael Nowak) says:
> 
> What would be optimal for me is to have a drive that was acessible equally
> from both sides, i.e. if you type dir from either side (Amiga or PC), you
> see all the files on the drive, both Amiga and PC.  Then, with a TOPS card
> on the PC side, I could let my Macintosh use the drive as well and all three
> computers could use the same hard drive, making it very easy for me to
> exchange files between all three machines.
> 
> Is such a thing possible?  If so, how is it done?  If not, what are the
> advantages of putting the drive on one side or the other?

It's potentially possible, but doesn't exist yet.  Here's the main reason.
The IBM and the Amiga use two completely different filing systems.  You can
format an Amiga partition on an IBM harddisk, or put an IBM file system in
an Amiga file, but it's not the same, because both machines don't initially
read the same filesystem.

So what you need is to teach one machine to read the filesystem of the other,
and then hook this into that machine's operating system.  No easy task.  The
IBM has a basically hard-wired file system, there's no supported way of adding
alternate file systems to the IBM.  On the Amiga side, this is very possible,
for example, the RAM: disk uses a custom file handler different than that of
the standard Amiga file system used for floppies and hard disks.  And one could
write a file system for the Amiga that used the underlying stuctured of PC-DOS,
UNIX, or whatever, given enough effort on the part of the implementor.  And
that effort is non-trivial, which is probably why no one's done it yet (at 
least to my knowledge).  You also risk some compatibility with alternate
file systems, if they're not written very carefully.  

So basically, it's possible, but nontrivial.

> Michael Nowak

-- 
Dave Haynie     Commodore-Amiga    Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh
   "The B2000 Guy"              PLINK : D-DAVE H             BIX   : hazy
    "Computers are what happen when you give up sleeping" - Iggy the Cat