Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!cica!iuvax!pur-ee!sage.cc.purdue.edu!aj0
From: aj0@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Eric Mulholland)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: file system questions
Message-ID: <3637@sage.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 19 Feb 90 06:51:16 GMT
References: <1557@crash.cts.com> <38736@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: aj0@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Eric Mulholland)
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 48

>In article <1557@crash.cts.com> tsouth@pro-pac.cts.com writes:
>>technology?  Will ProDOS ever break the 32 meg limitation (with or w/o a

In article <38736@apple.Apple.COM> mattd@Apple.COM (Matt Deatherage) writes:
>I don't know why people keep asking this because the answer is NOT going to
>PRODOS 8 IS NOT GOING TO SEE BEYOND 32 MB PER VOLUME OR 2 DEVICES PER LOGICAL
>If P8 didn't have these design limitations, ProDOS 16 (and GS/OS beyond it)
>wouldn't have been necessary.

    As I understand it, ProDOS 16 was merely a shell around ProDOS 8 and
in effect has the same limitations as ProDOS 8, including 32M max limit.

    GS/OS on the other hand is a complete rewrite and thus CAPIBLE of
larger volume sizes.  Take a closer look at GS/OS and see that it uses
FSTs to do all the low level work with the hardware.  In knowing this,
it's easy to see that volume size for GS/OS is limited by its FSTs.  So
what FSTs are there?

    There is a ProDOS FST, this is what must of us are use to, because
it is so simular to ProDOS 8, but has a few extentions, like forks.

    There's a Sierra-Online FST.  This allows those who have expensive
CD drives to READ CDs.  If and when CDs become writeable, this FST will
not allow you to take advantage of that since the FST is READ ONLY.

    Now there's an AppleTalk FST.  This gives us read/write access on
AppleTalk networks.  What percentage of GS users are hooked up to
networks?  I would say not many.  And who is going to run out and buy
a Mac, hard drive and the networking software just so they can have a
large storage device to run there GS files from?  I suspect none.

    There is also a Character FST.  I don't know about you, but I don't
see any acceptible way of storing/retrieving files from there.

    So Matt, you say ProDOS 16 and GS/OS were written to get around the
limitations of ProDOS 8?  The only storage capicaty limit that I see as
being removed is the number of volumes per slot.  With the size of hard
drives getting larger, we still CANNOT make good use of them without
having to resort to defining many partions to fill the space.  This is
another main reason why we want a mac FST, so we can format the hard
drive to one big volume!  Some will even settle for a FST of a new file
system, one that will permit GS/OS to live up to its fullest protentials!

-- 
     ____
 Y_,_|[]|   Eric Mulholland
{|_|_|__|   aj0@sage.cc.purdue.edu
//oo--OO    ...!pur-ee!sage.cc!aj0