From mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi Sun May 30 23:35:39 2010 Date: Sun, 30 May 2010 13:20:31 +0200 To: MiNT Mailingliste Subject: Re: [MiNT] Diskette Image Mounting Message-ID: <20100530132030.A12269@mbernstein.de> References: <4BF735AE.4090403@hawaii.edu> <20100527211519.A13585@mbernstein.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from paul.wratt@gmail.com on Sat, May 29, 2010 at 07:21:05PM +1000 From: "Michael Bernstein" X-Df-Sender: 731418 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi Errors-to: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi X-original-sender: mint@mbernstein.de Precedence: bulk List-help: List-unsubscribe: List-Id: X-List-ID: List-subscribe: List-owner: List-post: Hi Paul, > betaDOS would be the way to go, but I am sure that the guy who wrote > MetaDOS still has his sources (saw a DVD driver update somewhere) The guy who wrotes MetaDOS was Julian Reschke. I did not switch to betaDOS because the version i have still installed was not able to load .slb. I did not really need slb librarys at that time but because MetaDOS has more funtionality i did not switch to betaDOS. For develop .bos driver there are no differences. But after you point again to betaDOS i took a look at betaDOS and found, that my version was a little bit outdated and the actual version of betaDOS has also SLB support. But one problem still exists which was for me the reason to make a break in my work. A BOS driver was quite simple. But as a professional software engineer i had learned to be lazy. If a solution for a problem exists, i reuse this solution. And my spare time is limited. If i look at the traffic at this list, i got the feeling i have less spare time than many writing at this list ;-) I need a FAT filesystem driver to access the disk image. In the TOS (or MinT) kernel is a FAT filesystem driver present. But both, metaDOS and betaDOS, dont provide a solution to connect the built in FAT filesystemdriver to a metaDOS/betaDOS bios driver. I can only connect a metaDOS/betaDOS DOS (filesystem) driver to a BOS driver. I did not find any FAT filesystemdriver for metaDOS/betaDOS. So i had also do the work to write a FAT driver for metaDOS/betaDOS. I can do this because my little program to access a disk image also contains code to access a FAT filesystem. So the knowledge was present. But my hope was to avoid additional work. And if i start a FAT DOS driver, there is also the next step to add VFAT support. And i think this driver should be really good, fast and stable because someone could get the idea to use this driver for other new bios devices. > There are possibilities for SLB or related (LDG), have a hunt around, > maybe chat to or ask someone. Your driver (if it were to be an .xdd) > may be the required catalyst to get dynamic libraries in the kernel... > (maybe) I did not need SLB support for my driver. A BOS driver was quite simple. Only a few bios functions which reads from a file. And if someone needs SLB support he can use betaDOS. For convert the BOS driver to a .XDD i have to fetch some informations about how to write a .xdd. If i can make GEMDOS calls to read/write a file, i expect not much problems and the driver will be quite simple. Best regards Michael