[Coco] DriveWire with filesizes not divisible by 256

[CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts]

Hi Aaron,

It was my understanding that DW is a DISK server, not a FILE server. As 
such, it should IMHO, behave in a way similar to a *real* disk drive, 
viz, return to the client *only* complete sectors. OS9, at the driver 
level, does not work with partial sectors, but, as in RSDOS(DECB) OS9 
(via RBF) does have a way to show exactly how long the file is (in 
bytes). DECB stores the size of the last sector in a byte in the 
directory, while OS9 stores the complete file length in the File 
Descriptor sector.

My $0.02

--
Regards, Bob Devries
Dalby, QLD, Australia


On 12/05/2014 5:45 AM, CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts wrote:
> A couple survey responses have indicted a desire to use files of arbitrary
> size in DriveWire.
>
> Since we only read/write 256 byte sized sectors, what is the correct way to
> do that?  Just fill the last sector with 0?  There isn't a way for the
> server to tell the coco what's part of the file and what's not in the last
> sector, and vice versa the file would become padded to 256 byte boundary if
> the last sector is written, since coco can't tell server the same.  Does
> that matter?  It feels a bit dangerous.
>
> -aaron
>
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