Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!vsi1!daver!mfgfoc!exodus
From: exodus@mfgfoc.uucp (Greg Onufer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: A proposal -- TOS Replacement Project
Message-ID: <486@mfgfoc.uucp>
Date: 17 Nov 88 22:27:39 GMT
References: <8811171507.AA19122@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Focus Semiconductor Sys, Sunnyvale
Lines: 37

From article <8811171507.AA19122@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, by V61@DHDURZ1.BITNET (Ronald Lamprecht):
>  [[[ ... ]]]

I have had a project on the back burner (so to speak) for quite some 
time now.  It may interest somebody, maybe somebody who would want to
help get it done.

What I have been thinking about was a replacement for the GEM/TOS file
system.  I want to intercept the calls to all disk operations and
either 1) pass them through to TOS if they reference a TOS partition
(ie, hard disk partition formatted by TOS, or Floppy disk formatted
by TOS), or 2) use my own routines with something similiar to the
Berkeley Fast File System.  The new file system routines should have
interfaces to actually make them transparent to the end user, ie. they should
keep the same 8+3 file name restrictions, and basically still read/write,
etc, the same as TOS.  Only the underlying disk accesses would be different
(superblocks, inodes, buffering, 8k + partial blocks in the file system,
speed!!!)...

I can see the speed improvement being very helpful, and if done right,
programs shouldn't be able to tell the difference unless they read the
raw disk expecting it to be TOS (so Disk Doctors, etc, will fail miserably,
but that is what fsck is for :-)

I can also see many trashed hard drives while testing this beast.  Which
means many backups and restores.  

I was going to start this project just for the eduactional reasons, to see
if it could be done, and to make the Atari more liveable in general.

Any comments?  Suggestions?  (Forget the flames)

--greg

-- 
Greg Onufer   //  Focus Semiconductor  //     University of the Pacific
  exodus@cheers.uucp (daver!cheers!exodus@Sun.COM) 	415-965-0604