Time: Fri May 16 05:19:04 1997 by primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id QAA29928 for [address in tool bar]; Thu, 15 May 1997 16:32:53 -0700 (MST) 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? > > > >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= >Unsub info - send e-mail to majordomo@majordomo.pobox.com, with >"unsubscribe liberty-and-justice" in the body (not the subject) >Liberty-and-Justice list-owner is Mike Goldman <whig@pobox.com> > > ======================================================================== Paul Andrew, Mitchell, B.A., M.S. : Counselor at Law, federal witness email: [address in tool bar] : Eudora Pro 3.0.1 on Intel 586 CPU web site: http://www.supremelaw.com : library & law school registration ship to: c/o 2509 N. Campbell, #1776 : this is free speech, at its best Tucson, Arizona state : state zone, not the federal zone Postal Zone 85719/tdc : USPS delays first class w/o this ======================================================================== =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Unsub info - send e-mail to majordomo@majordomo.pobox.com, with "unsubscribe liberty-and-justice" in the body (not the subject) Liberty-and-Justice list-owner is Mike Goldman <whig@pobox.com>
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