Time: Thu May 15 23:14:13 1997
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Delivered-To: liberty-and-justice-outgoing@majordomo.pobox.com
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 22:45:01 -0700
To: liberty-and-justice@pobox.com
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: L&J: SLF: FAT16 and Computer Monopolies
Status: U

Gene,

Can you point us to a document which 
details the exact data structure for
FAT16 and FAT32?  It would be good
to elevate this debate with the exact
details of those structures.

Many thanks for your expert comments here.

I am quite miffed at Golden Gates
for making my upgrade path a total
nightmare.  I come from a tradition
which places great value on upward
compatibility.  So, I continue to
be productive with 5 gigabytes of 
text, growing daily, and two machines
both running Windows 3.11 into the
foreseeable future.

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



At 03:49 AM 5/14/97 -0500, you wrote:
>
>>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.

Right, and the position of each FAT entry
maps into a specific cluster, or set of
sectors.  It is known as an address vector
to programmers, much like an interrupt 
vector, i.e.  when a given interrupt occurs,
start executing at the address pointed to
by the corresponding interrupt address.
So, the position of a given value in the 
address vector has its own meaning.  It's
the difference between a P.O. Box #, and
its contents.

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



>
>
>>Now, if you have a large drive (1 gigabyte or more),
>>the size of N is numerous sectors of 512, all of which
>>get assigned to a given file.  In other words,
>>if N is 16, all 16 get assigned to a given file,
>>regardless of how much data is in that file.
>
>So use smaller partitions.  I know of backup software that'll take a
>major shit if it comes across a partition bigger than some arbitrary
>size.  A 4gig disk as one big fat partition is *begging* for trouble,
>because a screwup which happens to that one partition affects the whole
>disk.  With multiple partitions, you can protect a good portion of the
>disk and only have it affect that one partition.
>
>
>>So, if you have a lot of files, as I do, then you
>>will waste one-half cluster for each file you have
>>stored in your DOS partition.
>
>Two words:  zip files.  Helps keep you organised, as well.
>
>
>>The solution is to migrate to FAT32, which does away
>>with this problem completely.  But, the migration to
>>FAT32 is not straightforward, because you need to
>>have a BIOS which is compatible with FAT32.  Some
>
>Which means that you'll have to "upgrade" your whole OS, and "upgrade"
>each and every application and utility which now refuses to run on the
>new OS or which refuses to recognise FAT32, which means essentially
>*THROWING OUT* all your old software and starting over from *zero*.
>
>Looks to me the big conspiracy is with Monkey$oft and their big push to
>dupe the suckers into buying all-new versions of their apps *AS WELL AS*
>the OS itself.  Also, look at all the bloatware that's out there, which
>requires either a CD or three (at 650meg a pop) or a *BOX* of diskettes.
>Sheeit, I can remember when decent apps would fit all on one or two
>floppies at most...
>
>
>>machines have a flash BIOS, which means that you
>>can update the EPROMs on the fly (EPROM = eraseable
>>programmable read only memory).  If you have an old
>>BIOS and it is not a flash BIOS, forget it.  Your
>>machine is now officially obsolete.
>
>And it'll forever be that way as long as The Market(tm) suckers people
>into spending their bux on new OSes, mirror copies of new apps, bigger
>and faster computers just to *run* the crap, more memory, bigger disks,
>/ad nauseam/.
>
>And even if you're a programmer, you can forget about writing your own
>apps or utils to do something which no commercial app does.  Forget the
>days of firing up the text editor and cranking out a C program in a few
>minutes (or hours or days, depending on how big a job you want it to
>do), because now everything requires Winblows (or one of its variants)
>and a whole development kit just to print out "Hello, world!".
>
>
>>It is simpler to start with a new machine, flash
>>BIOS, and virgin disk.  Then load your programs
>>and data onto a new FAT32 system, with ease and
>>comfort (and great expense also).
>
>That parenthetical phrase is key.
>
>
>>Now do you see how the monopoly enriches itself?
>>FAT16 chews up disk space quite rapidly, and the
>>American People are not well trained enough to
>>know that they are getting the shaft, as a group.
>
>Phewy.  If you use floppies, you're using FAT12, a 12-bit FAT which is
>used for small drives of *all* types, floppies and fixed.  Any small
>hard drive still in use with a small-enough partition will still use
>FAT12 in order to save space on those drives where space is at a
>premium.
>
>Don't forget that a 32-bit FAT will require quite a bit of space as
>required to fit all the sectors of the partition in question.  Also,
>every single entry pointing to a sector will by necessity be *doubled*
>in size, being that an address is now 32 bits wide instead of 16.
>---
> . SLMR 2.0 #..jw . No one ever said freedom was free.
>
>                                                          
>
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