Short: V2.16 Multi filesys+.device, win95+mac++ Uploader: msw@blackpool.ac.uk Author: frans (francis swift) Type: disk/misc Replaces: xfs.lha XFileSystem Version 2.16 Consisting of xfsd (a disk handler for your L: directory) and fd.device / file.device (for your devs: directory), and either mountlist.xfsd (for your devs: directory on WB2) or FD0 etc (for your devs:DOSDrivers directory on WB3). Current xfsd status: readdir read write delete rename readpartition format amiga + + + + + + msdos / win95 + + + + + + mac + + + ql + + + + + ? minix + + + + + archimedes + + cpm + + 1541 / 1581 + + spectrum + + Current fd.device status: read write trackformat Amiga tracks + + + Diskspare 80/82 trk + + + mfm (pc etc) + + + Current file.device status: read write format flat files + + dms files + pctask/janus hardfiles + + As you can see, there is currently no way to format disks, that is write new filesystem info onto them. In fact, most of the code to format disks on filesystems marked above as writeable exists, it's just there's no way to select it at the moment. From release V2.15, fd.device can be used to format disks, that is, write out new tracks, so if you have a disk image file you can write it out via DEV:fd.device to create a new disk. See the xfs.guide 'usage' section for further info. ---------------------------- xfs216 ----------------------------- Fixed slight bug in clearing newly allocated directory blocks in the PC disk handler. This led to bogus entries sometimes showing up with weird names. There was only a one in sixteen chance of this occuring, and it never occured on 1440k disks, so I'd never seen it. Anyway, it should be fixed now. Somehow the JAZX entry in DOSDrivers went missing. Now included. The disk type numbers for Minix have changed to accommodate the long file name variants: MNX\0 Original Minix, 14 character names MNX\1 Original Minix, 30 character names MNX\2 Minix Version 2, 14 character names MNX\3 Minix Version 2, 30 character names Note that of the above only MNX\0 is supported at present. Due to internal re-ordering of the individual handlers, the flag bits got messed up. So I got rid of them. The new scheme uses the control field string to enable/disable particular handlers. See the explanation in the guide (usage > Workbench) or mount.xfsd. There is a new utility called dospkt in the C directory, also an upgraded version of the devio utility. These can be used to perform instruct devices/handlers to do low/high level formatting of disks (amongst other things). As an experiment I've enabled the disk format code in the QL handler, so using devio/dospkt you should be able to create valid QL disks. For the next release I'll probably add PC/Minix disk formatting. Note that the usage of devio has changed so if you are using it in scripts you will need to change them. --------------------------- xfs215 ------------------------------ Added support for 1581 disks (read only at present). These disks sometimes have what are loosely referred to as 'partitions', really fixed length directories. These are accessed just like directories. You can now use fd.device to 'format' disks. That is, you can use the DEV:fd.device,, pseudo file to write out disk images of a particular format. So if you have a blank disk, read it in using copy DEV:fd.device,0 ram:temp This will copy whatever disk is in drive 0 into file 'ram:temp'. You can then write it out again using, for instance copy ram:temp DEV:fd.device,0,880 ; if it is an amiga disk copy ram:temp DEV:fd.device,0,720 ; for a pc / ql / minix disk etc. See further explanations in 'usage > fd.device' in the guide. To match up with the above, devd (the DEV: handler) has been slightly amended, as has the devio utility. You will also find a later version of the XL friendly fd.device in devs/storage. While rewriting fd.device I took some time to examine the way diskspare.device generated checksums (which was the reason for fd.device not being able to write to these disks properly). I also implemented an additional track scan to determine whether a disk has more than 80 tracks. So now there should be full support for all the different diskspare permutations. There is also a new version of the mfm utility (for use with rawpatch) to allow track checksum verification. --------------------------- xfs214 ------------------------------ Completed MINIX handler. Of course there may be some hidden bugs so it should be considered just a beta version for now. Patched disk type into dl_DiskType. Only reason it hadn't been done till now was I thought I'd already done it. So now you will get sensible results from Stephan Rupprecht's Info program. Anyway, it gives me an excuse to explain the disk types that are returned. Amiga DOS\0 DOS\1 FFS DOS\2 Int DOS\3 Int FFS DOS\4 DC DOS\5 DC FFS MSDOS/W95 MSD\0 MAC MAC\0 Minix MNX\1 (and later maybe MNX\2) QL QL5A 720k (and ED disks) QL5B 1440k Spectrum ZXS\0 Disciple ZXS\1 UniDos ZXS\2 SamDos ZXS\4 Opus (180k) Archimedes ARMD ARME CP/M CPM\2 (and later ZXS\3 for Plus3Dos) C64 1541 (and later 1581) These will (eventually, NOT YET) be the dos types passed to the Format() command to select the file system. Also, the file.device has been updated to allow it to work better with devd (DEV:) so that you get the chance to select a file before the DEV: device asks if there's a disk (file) in the 'drive'. Now that I have some 1581 disks to experiment with I should be able to add handling of these to xfs. Since these disks use side skewing (quick explanation - the top is on the bottom), I will need to modify fd.device to accept this format. Also, although the physical sectors are 512 bytes, the logical sectors are only 256 bytes, which will make sector allocation complicated, so for the moment support will be read only. Finally I tidied up some clean-up routines so some random crashes on removal of disks should disappear. --------------------------- xfs213 ------------------------------ Added a couple of extra disk types to existing handler modules, specifically Archimedes D type disks, and Spectrum 180k (Opus Discovery) type disks. Note that both use unusual sector sizes, the Archimedes D using 1024 byte sectors, and the Spectrum 180k disks using 256 byte sectors (it's also 40 track single sided!). Luckily fd.device sorts all this out transparently. One more technical point. Whenever a disk is recognised by xfsd the disk dos type is now written into de_DosType in the environment table of the device entry in the dos list. This is to allow anyone using the Info() call (which xfsd implements like most handlers by returning ID_DOS_DISK in id_DiskType for disks it recognises) to access the true disk type. Updated crc utility to fix a slight bug. There's a slight change to the flags setting in the mountlists, which should be backwards compatible, see mount.xfsd. Up till this release it was possible to open directories as if they were files. This was a side effect of the internal implementation which took advantage of the file-like structure of directories in certain filesystems (QDOS,MSDOS,RISCOS etc). I left this in so it would be possible to write external utilities to access filesystem-specific information that would otherwise be inaccessible via xfsd. Unfortunately, there are too many badly written programs out there that, when given no file name on the command line, open the empty string by mistake. Of course, this means the current directory, so they get a 'wrong type' error. With xfsd, they would get no error, and depending on the way the filesystem sets the file size for the directory, may try to read the whole disk into memory, or 4GB, or any random number. Anyway I've disallowed this again.