Time: Fri May 16 05:19:04 1997
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Delivered-To: liberty-and-justice-outgoing@majordomo.pobox.com
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 22:05:45 -0700
To: liberty-and-justice@pobox.com
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: L&J: FAT16 and Computer Monopolies
References: <337A6A98.4F37ECB3@gate.net>

You are putting words in my mouth.
Microsoft's virtual monopoly gave
it a very good reason to delay 
release of FAT32, and that reason,
among others, was to boost the
profitability of disk drive
manufacturers.  It is a very 
cozy relationship, particularly
when MS can claim a virtual 
monopoly.  It is the monopolistic
practices to which I object.
This is the not the first time
such a thing has happened with
Microsoft, and it won't be the
last, if I know anything about
the computer industry.

/s/ Paul Mitchell
http://www.supremelaw.com



At 01:38 PM 5/15/97 -0500, you wrote:
>
>>I don't know exactly how this topic fits in to the charter
>>of L&J (though, of course, its not the only such topic), but
>
>Beats me.  PM started in with a "conspiracy" about FAT16 being some evil
>Gatesian plot to waste our hard drive space or something.  While I don't
>think too highly *at all* of the little richer'n God twerp, *or* his
>underhanded practices to raise M$ to monopoly status, I don't think that
>FAT16 was any kind of conspiracy so much as it was a holdover from the
>"640k should be enough for everyone!" days of 'puting.
>
>
>>>>N varies in direct proportion to the physical size
>>>>of the drive, since the size of FAT16 is fixed at
>>>>65,536 entries (each arrow "--->" is an entry).
>>>>These arrows are called "pointers" in computer science.
>
>>> Not quite.  The FAT is simply a *table* showing what space on the drive
>>> is free or in-use.  It's bitwise, so that one byte can mark up to 8
>>> logical clusters on the disk.  All it is, is a glorified collection of
>>> "Occupado" signs for each cluster in that partition.
>
>>Not quite.  A FAT is *not* a bitmap.  If it were, a files could
>>not become fragmented (since there wouldn't be a way to "chain"
>>its clusters together), though your *disk* still could.  A FAT
>
>??  The pointers are in the directory entry itself, making up the bulk
>of the entry.  The rest is the 8+3 filename, date/time, attributes,
>size, etc.  At least that's what I remember, as it *has* been a few
>years since I've crawled that far under the hood.
>
>Yeesh, I've worked on everything from TRS-80 GATs and HITs, to Unix
>inodes, that it all seems to blur together after a while.
>
>
>>*is* a table.  FAT16 uses a table whose entries are 16 bits;
>>FAT32 table entries are 32 bits.  In either, a table entry
>>represents two things for each cluster:
>>   1) the "occupied" sign mentioned above
>>   2) a "pointer" (table index) of the next cluster in a chain
>
>Mnokay, I'll defer.
>
>
>>BTW, FAT16 is *not* fixed at 65536 entries.  It has a maximum
>>size of 65526. 10 (it's been awhile - I may be off by one) are
>>reserved to indicate end-of-file or bad cluster.  The size of
>
>65526 addressable sectors maximum 'cause of the boot sector (MBR) and
>other goodies, which are fixed in place.
>
>
>>FAT32 does *not* require that your BIOS be upgraded, since the
>>BIOS doesn't know anything about file systems at all, just
>>physical drives with their attendant cylinders, heads, and
>
>'Zackly.
>
>
>>sectors.  Now, if you want physical drives bigger than about
>>540Mb, you need a recent BIOS, which can translate read/write
>>requests using <cylinder, head, sector> to some form of logical
>>block addressing.
>
>That was the ~540meg "wall" that IDE drives ran into, agreed.  Newer
>BIOSes with LBA and translation got around that.  Problem goes away when
>you use SCSI, haha.
>
>
>>The only new apps required by FAT32 are apps that physically
>>read/write a drive, such as defragging utilities, etc.  And,
>>the only entries that "point" to a cluster (not a sector) are
>>in directory entries (which have a few bytes to spare anyway)
>>and the innards of the file system driver.
>
>I'd be cautious about a statement like this, because while this is the
>way it "should be", I remember cases where it wasn't, and where mundane
>apps like word processors "broke" when shifting over to FAT32, and
>needed either patches or replacement for the newer OS.
>
>
>>BTW, I *love* the idea of FAT32.  I'm sick and tired of having
>>9 partitions on my system, just to keep dead space down to an
>
>9?  Heh, you're worse than I am.  :D
>
>
>>(a pretty good program), the rule on my main machine is that
>>all partitions must be accessible to all OS's (I *do* admit
>
>Hey, if you find a way to get Linux, OS/2, and DOS playing nice with
>each other, lemme know at this iddress.
>---
> . SLMR 2.0 #..jw . If only AT&T knew what I was do...click  Hello?  Hello?
>
>
                               
>
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Paul Andrew, Mitchell, B.A., M.S.    : Counselor at Law, federal witness
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