Re: [Freedos-devel] 4, 096 byte sectors and DOSLFN, UIDE... question

[Jim M. <jmi...@ya...>]

no, that's because of hackers who breach OS security - they try to find ways to break in as a challenge or whatever. I would like them to find something better to do with their skills...


I personally would like to see a nice small fast OS (there were 2 based on linux, vmix and **** small linux). the biggest problem is variety of available applications, and availablility of compilers for the platform for developers to write code (me being a dev).

I like multithreaded, multitasking code.

gcc/GNU is the nicest freely available compiler. it has version 4.9.0 in pre-release with new features.


>________________________________
> From: Charles Belhumeur <chb...@gm...>
>To: Jim Michaels <jmi...@ya...>; Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. <fre...@li...> 
>Sent: Thursday, January 2, 2014 1:03 AM
>Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] 4, 096 byte sectors and DOSLFN, UIDE... question
> 
>
>Cool folks.  Although.....
>
>You somewhere it all went wrong.  We got too used to, too dependent on
>layering and complexity.  I blame MicroSoft mostly, but the greed in
>general in the industry and people getting in over their heads for
>money and prestige is the main factor.  Patch it, hack it, do whatever
>it takes to get to market on time and on budget and hold our market
>share.  We've kind of gotten used to Dog's Breakfast software.
>
>If I thought I had the years it would left in this life I'd write my
>own OS from scratch and make it a lot simpler and faster than anything
>we have today.  I've learned that Windows is slow because MS likes to
>buffer things, have several copies of everything in memory.  Something
>to do with safe programming for the mentally challenged I think or
>just an old persistent patch thats been forgotten about or ignored.
>Maybe a work around for some bug or flaw in Intel CPUs.  Maybe they
>don't multi-task so well after all! (Its kinda contrary to the basic
>design of digital CPUs, they are serial devices, thus the multi-cores
>now.)
>
>Well keep at it folks.  I hope you don't end up with something as
>crappy as Windows in the end. Make KISS the holy grail or you will!
>Tough to keep it simple with the hardware manufacturers riding the
>money train too
>
>Charlie B.
>
>
>On 1/2/14, Jim Michaels <jmi...@ya...> wrote:
>>
>>
>>  hi... is there a chance it could work with any sector size, so that it
>> doesn't have to be modified when things change again latrer? that could be
>> extremely useful, since worm drives have 512, 1024 byte sectors, Advanced
>> Format drives have 4096 byte sectors, and drive manufacturers are likely to
>> increase this value as time goes on. so having something that can handle a
>> variable number of sectors would be best.
>>
>> in fact, I wish djgpp could be redone too if it has those same
>> limitations...
>>
>> this is a very nice Christmas present! cool! usb disks! I like this!
>>
>>
>>
>>>________________________________
>>> From: Bertho Grandpied <y31...@ya...>
>>>To: fre...@li...
>>>Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2013 3:44 PM
>>>Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] 4, 096 byte sectors and DOSLFN, UIDE...
>>> question
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Bernd Blaauw <bblaauw@ho...> wrote on    2013-12-29 19:44...
>>>
>>>
>>>>Would you be able to test your driver against the ASPI.SYS listed at
>>>[ http://bootcd.narod.ru/index_e.htm ] ?
>>>
>>>Probably not directly. If I read and understand the description at that
>>> site correctly,
>>>that seems to be an ASPI driver for ATAPI devices, mostly optical like CD.
>>> Those
>>>devices wouls usually have 1024 byte sectors, wouldn't they ? Also, they
>>> aren't "FAT"
>>>formatted devices.
>>>
>>>In its current state, my driver - actually, more of a proof of concept -
>>> will only mount FAT partitions
>>>from (something that behaves as a ) R/W hard disk, with 4096 byte sectors
>>>(both "physical" and "logical"). There are additional limitations ATM, it
>>> will only mount 1
>>>"disk" (partition), which must be a "primary" (defined in the MBR) and
>>> reside entirely
>>>within the first 64 Gigabytes of the support. It does not support an "int
>>> 13" (BIOS) interface
>>>either, and even the DOS functions are crippled (no IOCTL calls
>>> supported...)
>>>
>>>None of these limits are fundamental, of course, the reason they exist was
>>> to hack a
>>>functional, testable, driver for my external IOMEGA disk enclosure as
>>> quickly as possible.
>>>Once searching the web had got me a copy of okdish ASPI documents and SDK
>>> (Adaptec),
>>>it was not hard to achieve this goal in 2 or 3 days' work. I do not think I
>>> deserve praise ;=)
>>>
>>>Adding full 32-bit sector numbering (instead of 24 bits now) allowing 16
>>> tebibyte disks
>>>is easy and a priority. But the rest - enhanced DOS driver functions,
>>> multiple partitions
>>>including secondaries, mixed sector sizes, int 13 BIOS...will have  to
>>> wait, may be forever
>>>- unless there is going to be strong demand, and then possibly against
>>> retribution, i.e., not free :(
>>>
>>>> The idea is the following, as demonstrated for SCSI/USB/Firewire:
>>>> 1) load a DOS floppy image in memory while hiding all drives
>>>> (Syslinux/Grub)
>>>> 2) load driver for mass storage controller (SCSIMGR$)
>>>> 3) load driver for disks (ASPIDISK.SYS)
>>>> 4) get access to the recognised partitions/filesystems
>>>> (preferably including int13)
>>>
>>>IIRC someone on this list, Eric Auer possibly? opined int 13 not to be such
>>> "a must".
>>>I like "KISS" where possible and BTW the "minimal" driver I have now for
>>> all its limitations
>>>is under 1 kilobyte resident. So, being lazy does bring instant reward, too
>>> !
>>>
>>>To be fair, the real hard work,  i.e. the USB protocol "stack" is done not
>>> by this ASPIDISK thing,
>>>but by USBASPI !
>>>
>>>--
>>>Czerno
>>>
>>>
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