From: mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 11:24:55 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca To: jdashiel AT eagle1 DOT eaglenet DOT com cc: OpenDOS Mailing List Subject: Re: [opendos] OpenDOS + Win95 w/FAT32? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Organization: Total disorganization. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net Precedence: bulk On Sun, 2 Feb 1997 jdashiel AT eagle1 DOT eaglenet DOT com wrote: > Why drive letters in the first place? > Drive numbers would allow for more flexibility than drive letters. Programs expect drive letters. Making drive numbers would work for new programs but would require a hack to work with older software. (Kinda like LFN's) If we're going to break older software, we might as well implement something that isn't a hack. This means adding commands like "MOUNT" and "UMOUNT" to dos. For example C:\>MD PARTN2 C:\>MOUNT C:\PARTN2 HDA3: /TYPE=EXT2 Now that disk is a part of the C: drive. It works just like the old DOS JOIN command, well not exactly, but very similarly. It also does away with the drive letter idea and makes things much simpler. Using drive numbers would be worse than switching from DOS to VMS!!!! I'd much rather type: C:\>CD PARTN2 than C:\>SET DEFAULT DISK$USER2:[MIKE.HARRIS] (equivalent VMS command) OH, by the way, if anyone wants to have a trip down memory lane, I've got a program called DCL for DOS that is a port of the VMS DCL command interpreter!! It is freeware and is good for a laugh. You actually *HAVE* to type SET DEFAULT and all those lovely 10-mile long vms commands. SHOW DIRECTORY was it? or just DIRECTORY? I can't remember. If anyone wants it, just drop me a line and I'll mail it out. It's pretty small (100k or so). > As another example, with linux if you have the right > speech synthesizer and emacs running on your system you can > also run emacspeak which gives a voice to linux. If you have Linux, you can run all of those direct write DOS programs under DOSemu and use Linux speech software to do the dirty work, or you can telnet to yourself and run DOSemu so that the screen is sent serially. Works for me. Oh, by the way, you just quoted about 2 pages of text with your reply and didn't refer to any of it. I've noticed that you quote a lot in this fashion and it does waste a lot of bandwidth. I'm not saying it to be rude or anything, just wanted to bring it to your attention in case you didn't realize. Does your mailer have an option for partial quoting? Take care Jude. Mike A. Harris | http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris Computer Consultant | My webpage has moved and my address has changed. My dynamic address: http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris/ip-address.html mailto:mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca 4DOS can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.std.com/vendors/jpsoft