From: jdashiel AT eagle1 DOT eaglenet DOT com Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 00:19:43 -0500 (EST) To: mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca Cc: OpenDOS Mailing List Subject: Re: [opendos] OpenDOS + Win95 w/FAT32? In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net Precedence: bulk I was just remembering user areas in cp/m then, see your point though. Would mount or umount be able to handle tape drives eventually? It might make backups and restores go lots faster that way. On Tue, 4 Feb 1997 mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca wrote: > 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 > > jude