Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!batcomputer!riley
From: riley@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Daniel S. Riley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Writing to Floopies on Amiga
Message-ID: <9472@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 23 Dec 89 00:42:46 GMT
References: <4205@scolex.sco.COM>
Reply-To: riley@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Daniel S. Riley)
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 21

In article <4205@scolex.sco.COM> brianm@sco.COM (Brian Moffet) writes:
>I would like to be able to write raw data to the floppies with out
>having to go though opening the trackdisk.device.  What would be
>the problem with the trackdisk driver looking at the file
>being opened ("df1:"), mark the disk as "in use", and then 
>take data in using the file_offset value and byte_count to
>write directly to the disk?

It wouldn't be the trackdisk driver--the trackdisk device doesn't see
filenames (except when it writes them to header blocks, and it doesn't
understand those).  It would have to be the filesystem handler.  A
major responsibility of the file system handler is to ensure the
integrity of the file system it manages.  Writing blindly all over
the raw device is *not* a good way to ensure the integrity of the file
system, and it makes it *much* too easy to destroy your data.  If you
really want easy access access like that, it should be pretty easy to
implement as a separate handler, but it certainly doesn't belong in
the usual file system handlers.

-Dan Riley (riley@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu, cornell!batcomputer!riley)
-Wilson Lab, Cornell University