Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt
From: doug-merritt@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Fast File System for floppys ... how to.
Message-ID: <5256@cup.portal.com>
Date: 9 May 88 20:47:18 GMT
References: <30793@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <5888@well.UUCP> <861@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>
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Randall & Leo's comments about the danger of FFS on floppies are
well taken.

Given that some people will be interested anyway (hey, they ARE pretty
slow!), then what conclusion do we reach?

How about a little hotkey input handler that you bring up when you
want to pop a FFS diskette, that flushes buffers and tells you
when it's safe?

Yes, this may still be risky. However, this would be handy even
with SFS (slow file system) diskettes...I get nervous sometimes
about popping them out; I'd love to have something that I could use
to guarantee no disk access will happen when I want to grab one.

Especially if it had an emergency option to forcibly stop all disk
i/o (and shut off the red light)...I get nervous about rebooting
during brain damaged disk acesses.

You know, a program crashes, all goes nuts, but the little red light
is still on...If you reboot at this point (and since it may never go
off, you may have to), and a disk read or write is happening, mightn't
the reboot cause a problem? Or am I confused?

Even if I'm all wet about that, the input handler seems like a must for
those who *do* decide to use FFS with diskettes.

      Doug Merritt        ucbvax!sun.com!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt
                      or  ucbvax!eris!doug (doug@eris.berkeley.edu)
                      or  ucbvax!unisoft!certes!doug