That's all pretty true, but the way I see it, it doesn't matter - all the smartphones, cameras, MP3 players, etc. can use whatever stupidly encumbered format they wish.
Undaunted, we can offer a new FAT to modernize the existing aged FAT variants, and folks are free to use it (or not) as they see fit, but at least the option is there for those who wish to employ it. I venture a guess it wouldn't end up being the favorite choice of consumers, but power users and embedded device manufacturers may see an opportunity. NAS devices, home automation computers and other similar devices are becoming increasingly common, and offering a filesystem finally capable of handling the sizes of modern hard drives could be a welcome improvement for them, and just may help get FreeDOS used in a wider market. How do we know this isn't a chicken-and-egg problem? Maybe all the devices only use the proprietary exFAT because there was no open alternative. Maybe, had there been one available, we would all be using SD cards and such formatted in it by now. Is this unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No. Of course, you all are under no obligation to use my ideas. I know some here desperately cling to DOS as it was three decades ago, so far be it from me to attempt modernization. :) Merc On 9/24/2015 5:50 PM, Eric Auer wrote: > Hi Steve & Mercury, > ... >> I hope "remain compatible with DOS" does not equal "remain compatible >> with FAT 12/16/32" since the implementation I was envisioning would not >> offer any backward compatibility. Drives formatted in this FAT version >> would not be able to be read by any other DOS version without a software >> module to do so. That sucks for compatibility zealots but, as is said, >> sometimes to go forwards you must first go backwards. > Well you can try to go forwards, but what use is a cool gadget > when nobody can use it? You would have to offer at least some > rock-stable, easily loadable drivers for DOS, Linux (including > Android), Windows (all currently popular variants of it) and > Mac OS (including iOS) to be available on all places where now > exFAT is already working and pre-installed. Next, you would be > in the position of having to convince people who bought a pre- > formatted exFAT e.g. SD card that they should RE-format that. > > Which would require them to install your driver on every item > where they want to actually use the SD card. Which means that > you would have to get smartphone, camera, ... vendors on board. > > If you try to make the plan less bold, you have the option to > provide only drivers for DOS and, say, Linux and Windows 7+XP. > Linux because it might be easier and pave the way for Android. > > If, on the other hand, you ONLY provide DOS drivers, even all > people who dual-boot anything else with DOS would have to boot > DOS to access files on your new filesystem and be limited to > DOS writeable partitions when making copies of their files to > access them from the Linux, Windows or other on their same PC. > > Which means that, because DOS sucks at accessing NTFS or ext2 > drives, they would have to copy their files between your new > filesystem and a FAT32 partition, creating a bottleneck where > anything which makes your filesystem better than FAT32 would > never get visible from other operating systems. See also: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems > > Cheers, Eric > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
