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SOS maximum disk size 16Mb or 32Mb [message #356237] Tue, 31 October 2017 00:53 Go to next message
Rob Justice is currently offline  Rob Justice
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The question of SOS max disk size came up while I was trying to setup a CFFA1.x card on my apple ///, and trying to use Ciderpress to add multiple drives/partitions on the one CF card. Ciderpress it seems only supports 32mb sizes when using more than one from what I see. (this is its support for cffa)

And some further searching looks like 16mb is the limit for SOS hardisk sizes, although the A3 owners manual states 32mb as the max drive size supported. Some conflicting info.

I did some testing with Mess and SOS works fine with the 32Mb disk size. I can copy files to it in Ciderpress (I loaded up a Selector3 image I had) and it boots and works fine. The problem with >16Mb looks like it's just the system utilities disk that does not like it. It will not show the directory listing and a negative blocks count is displayed.

Was the source code ever released for the A3 System Utilities disk? This looks like its the limiting factor.

/Rob
Re: SOS maximum disk size 16Mb or 32Mb [message #356239 is a reply to message #356237] Tue, 31 October 2017 01:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gids.rs is currently offline  gids.rs
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On Monday, October 30, 2017 at 10:53:27 PM UTC-6, Rob Justice wrote:
> The question of SOS max disk size came up while I was trying to setup a CFFA1.x card on my apple ///, and trying to use Ciderpress to add multiple drives/partitions on the one CF card. Ciderpress it seems only supports 32mb sizes when using more than one from what I see. (this is its support for cffa)
>
> And some further searching looks like 16mb is the limit for SOS hardisk sizes, although the A3 owners manual states 32mb as the max drive size supported. Some conflicting info.
>
> I did some testing with Mess and SOS works fine with the 32Mb disk size. I can copy files to it in Ciderpress (I loaded up a Selector3 image I had) and it boots and works fine. The problem with >16Mb looks like it's just the system utilities disk that does not like it. It will not show the directory listing and a negative blocks count is displayed.
>
> Was the source code ever released for the A3 System Utilities disk? This looks like its the limiting factor.
>
> /Rob


That must be a printing error. Prodos and SOS use exactly the same volume header and have the same limitations, 32 Mb hard disk size and 16 Mb file size.
Re: SOS maximum disk size 16Mb or 32Mb [message #356253 is a reply to message #356239] Tue, 31 October 2017 09:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
David Schmidt is currently offline  David Schmidt
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Registered: October 2012
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On 10/31/2017 1:39 AM, I am Rob wrote:
> On Monday, October 30, 2017 at 10:53:27 PM UTC-6, Rob Justice wrote:
>> The question of SOS max disk size came up while I was trying to setup a CFFA1.x card on my apple ///, and trying to use Ciderpress to add multiple drives/partitions on the one CF card. Ciderpress it seems only supports 32mb sizes when using more than one from what I see. (this is its support for cffa)
>>
>> And some further searching looks like 16mb is the limit for SOS hardisk sizes, although the A3 owners manual states 32mb as the max drive size supported. Some conflicting info.
>>
>> I did some testing with Mess and SOS works fine with the 32Mb disk size. I can copy files to it in Ciderpress (I loaded up a Selector3 image I had) and it boots and works fine. The problem with >16Mb looks like it's just the system utilities disk that does not like it. It will not show the directory listing and a negative blocks count is displayed.
>>
>> Was the source code ever released for the A3 System Utilities disk? This looks like its the limiting factor.
>>
>> /Rob
>
>
> That must be a printing error. Prodos and SOS use exactly the same volume header and have the same limitations, 32 Mb hard disk size and 16 Mb file size.

History is at work here - there was no 32MB hard drive available for the
/// when software was being developed or maintained. So 32MB was a
theoretical limit (because there was no drive to actually test with).
Consequently the bug in System Utilities (and other environments) went
unnoticed. Here's what I wrote in the CFFA3000 manual concerning the
driver for the Apple ///:

"Unlike ProDOS, most of the environments under SOS are unable to use or
correctly recognize more than 32,767 blocks of data on any given block
device (approximately 16 megabytes). This is not a limitation of the
CFFA3000 card; this is a limitation of SOS environments like Pascal,
BASIC, and the Apple /// System Utilities. When creating virtual disks
for the Apple ///, remember to make them of 32,767 blocks or fewer in size."
Re: SOS maximum disk size 16Mb or 32Mb [message #356281 is a reply to message #356253] Tue, 31 October 2017 21:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rob Justice is currently offline  Rob Justice
Messages: 98
Registered: January 2013
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On Wednesday, November 1, 2017 at 12:35:23 AM UTC+11, schmidtd wrote:
> On 10/31/2017 1:39 AM, I am Rob wrote:
>> On Monday, October 30, 2017 at 10:53:27 PM UTC-6, Rob Justice wrote:
>>> The question of SOS max disk size came up while I was trying to setup a CFFA1.x card on my apple ///, and trying to use Ciderpress to add multiple drives/partitions on the one CF card. Ciderpress it seems only supports 32mb sizes when using more than one from what I see. (this is its support for cffa)
>>>
>>> And some further searching looks like 16mb is the limit for SOS hardisk sizes, although the A3 owners manual states 32mb as the max drive size supported. Some conflicting info.
>>>
>>> I did some testing with Mess and SOS works fine with the 32Mb disk size. I can copy files to it in Ciderpress (I loaded up a Selector3 image I had) and it boots and works fine. The problem with >16Mb looks like it's just the system utilities disk that does not like it. It will not show the directory listing and a negative blocks count is displayed.
>>>
>>> Was the source code ever released for the A3 System Utilities disk? This looks like its the limiting factor.
>>>
>>> /Rob
>>
>>
>> That must be a printing error. Prodos and SOS use exactly the same volume header and have the same limitations, 32 Mb hard disk size and 16 Mb file size.
>
> History is at work here - there was no 32MB hard drive available for the
> /// when software was being developed or maintained. So 32MB was a
> theoretical limit (because there was no drive to actually test with).
> Consequently the bug in System Utilities (and other environments) went
> unnoticed. Here's what I wrote in the CFFA3000 manual concerning the
> driver for the Apple ///:
>
> "Unlike ProDOS, most of the environments under SOS are unable to use or
> correctly recognize more than 32,767 blocks of data on any given block
> device (approximately 16 megabytes). This is not a limitation of the
> CFFA3000 card; this is a limitation of SOS environments like Pascal,
> BASIC, and the Apple /// System Utilities. When creating virtual disks
> for the Apple ///, remember to make them of 32,767 blocks or fewer in size."

Thanks, was looking for some more commentary on this.

/Rob
Re: SOS maximum disk size 16Mb or 32Mb [message #356305 is a reply to message #356281] Wed, 01 November 2017 12:09 Go to previous message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: fadden

On a similar note, CiderPress had a 64-bit math bug that caused it to throw assertion failures when confronted with a MacPartition volume larger than 4GB. Fixed earlier this week, in v4.0.3-a1.
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