Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 13:01:08 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Bill Currie <billc AT blackmagic DOT tait DOT co DOT nz>
cc: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Detecting fat32 drives.
In-Reply-To: <199710201956.IAA12476@teleng1.tait.co.nz gatekeeper.tait.co.nz>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.971021130034.3667B-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
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On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, Bill Currie wrote:


> I was thinking of a once off call that sets a flag indicating the 
> need for FAT32 calls (that's what I did in my lfn driver, but 
> reversed)

That was how LFN worked in DJGPP v2.0, but it turned out this approach
might have some problems when some drives (e.g., networked ones) don't
support LFN.
 
> I'll try out the FAT32 file calls on a floppy, but I honestly can't 
> imagine them not working on non fat32 drives if they work at all (ie 
> the calls are either legal or they're not, no dependency on the 
> drive, just the OS).

This depends on implementation, and we already know that Windows 9X
includes a lot of dirty solutions that almost work, but trap you in
certain situations when you need them to work 100%.

If it turns out that *all* FAT32 calls succeed on all types of drives,
including networked, CD-ROM, floppies, etc., then a global USE_FAT32
flags is an OK solution.  Otherwise, we would need a means to test the
availability of FAT32 on a per-drive basis, or maintain a flag in the
data structures which track open files (yuck!).