[Coco] HDB-DOS wish list

[Boisy G. Pitre]

On Sep 21, 2004, at 12:45 PM, Benoit Bleau wrote:

> Can I make a wish list for new features in HDB-DOS?
>
> 1. Add partition support (maybe something like 8 partitions) stored in 
> the
> eprom or flash.  Each partition could be defined as drive:offset and
> accessed as drive #0, #1 , #2 etc.
>
> For scsi,  that drive:offset could be 0 to 7 and for ide drive could be
> 0 for master, and 1 for slave.
>
> Using this method, we could have many partitions on the same drive, and
> others on different drives.

I've thought about this, and it is possible, but would require a major 
change in existing systems.

My thought was to allocate the first physical sector of any hard drive 
as a partition table, much the same way that MS-DOS/Windows does.  This 
first sector would contain entries which provide partition name, number 
of sectors and starting sector.  This would allow HDB-DOS and any 
number of other partitions to co-exist nicely.

The problems with this approach are:
1. It's not very backward compatible.
2. Most NitrOS-9 drivers as well as HDB-DOS would have to be modified 
to skip the first sector of any access.

> 2.Modify backup to allow backups from one partition to another?
> 	Backup 255#0  to 255#1    Backup from partition 0 disk 255
> 					    Partition #1 disk 255.

Another feature, but we hardly have any room left in the 8K of HDB-DOS 
to add more features.  I think something like this would be better 
served with an external program (like Steve Ostrom is working on).

> 3.Modify basic to understand the new partition structure. At least get
> load/M , run/M and save/M to understand it.

The individual commands wouldn't have to be modified.  HDB-DOS's DSKCON 
routine would just add 1 to every sector it accesses, thereby skipping 
the partition sector.

Boisy