Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Tom Buskey]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:59 PM,  wrote:

> On Wed, 1 Feb 2012 16:17:52 -0500
> Bill Freeman  wrote:
>
> > If I recall correctly, the Apple ][ bus gave us ROM on the I/O card to
> > bring the driver with the hardware, but addressing was controlled by
> > which slot you put the card in, and the signalling was closer to buffered
> > 6502 signals, rather than buffered 8088 signals.  So I don't see that
> > as being any more of a forerunner of ISA than S-100 was.
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> I've been lurking on the discussion...
>
> Yes, the 6502 had memory-mapped I/O only, so it was much different than
> 8080/x86. The instruction set didn't have any I/O instructions at all, you
> just wrote to an address that was pre-defined by the computer's
> architechure as I/O. On the Apple II, all the I/O was in C000-CFFF.
> Somewhere within that space (I forget where) each of the eight slots had 16
> bytes, selected by a pair of 74LS138's on the motherboard. If you wrote (or
> read) to one those addresses, you were talking to one of the I/O slots. It
> was up to the card/driver as to which of those 16 were control or I/O or
> whatever. Any card could pull down an inhibit-select to disable the ROM on
> the motherboard and run its own stuff.
>
> Ron Smith
> r...@mrt4.com
>
>
FWIW, the 6502 is once again available for purchase.  The original masks
were lost, but someone opened up an old 6502, took out a microscope...
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[r270]

On Wed, 1 Feb 2012 16:17:52 -0500
Bill Freeman  wrote:

> If I recall correctly, the Apple ][ bus gave us ROM on the I/O card to
> bring the driver with the hardware, but addressing was controlled by
> which slot you put the card in, and the signalling was closer to buffered
> 6502 signals, rather than buffered 8088 signals.  So I don't see that
> as being any more of a forerunner of ISA than S-100 was.

Hi everybody,

I've been lurking on the discussion...

Yes, the 6502 had memory-mapped I/O only, so it was much different than 
8080/x86. The instruction set didn't have any I/O instructions at all, you just 
wrote to an address that was pre-defined by the computer's architechure as I/O. 
On the Apple II, all the I/O was in C000-CFFF. Somewhere within that space (I 
forget where) each of the eight slots had 16 bytes, selected by a pair of 
74LS138's on the motherboard. If you wrote (or read) to one those addresses, 
you were talking to one of the I/O slots. It was up to the card/driver as to 
which of those 16 were control or I/O or whatever. Any card could pull down an 
inhibit-select to disable the ROM on the motherboard and run its own stuff.

Ron Smith
r...@mrt4.com

ps- I'm sorry if you got 2 of this email, first attempt failed. 
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ryan Stanyan]

On Feb 1, 2012, at 10:15 AM, Tom Buskey wrote:


On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:42 AM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:

Actually, the IBM-PC was following the Apple ][.   Jobs hadn't  
gotten into his control everything mode yet and Woz put the full  
schematics and ROM in the back of the user manual.  That manual  
managed to teach new users (who to be fair, were more technical than  
today's average user) and get into the full technical detail that us  
geeks want.


Nowadays manual are written on drool proof paper and I often wonder  
if the author & developer ever saw the software on anything but a  
fresh Windows XP sp2 install.  Or worse, the daily desktop they used  
that looks nothing like a standard system.


One thing I noticed when I was looking at the manuals for the Sun-1  
and DEC systems was that in order to be a normal user of those systems  
you had to know the hardware.  This was true even up to the first two  
computers I had when I was young.


However, when I got my computer for college, documentation was little  
more than a basic Windows XP guide.  So basically in twenty years time  
we've gone from what goes inside the case as this fun and interesting  
thing you can do with your equipment, to "here be dragons."




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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ed lawson]

This thread is a "trip down memory lane" although the retrievable part
is getting shorter or at least spottier every year. I believe I have
some Elephant floppies in the box somewhere in the attic along with the
OSI computer.   Wonder how many others downloaded files via a 300 baud
acoustic modem attached to telephone handset and stored it using an
audio cassette tape player. In the realm of some things never die, I
believe there are still active sites and forums dedicated to OSI
computers.
-- 
Ed Lawson
Ham Callsign: K1VP
PGP Key ID:   1591EAD3
PGP Key Fingerprint:  79A1 CDC3 EF3D 7F93 1D28  2D42 58E4 2287 1591 EAD3

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jerry Feldman]

On 02/01/2012 02:09 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
>   Then again, at $WORK we're currently trying to figure out the
> atrocity known as Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, so maybe it's
> just the fact that everything to do with a computer always sucks.  :-)
Maybe we all need Watson :-)

-- 
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Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Bill Freeman]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:
> On 02/01/2012 10:15 AM, Tom Buskey wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:42 AM, Jerry Feldman > > wrote:
>>
>>     On 01/31/2012 07:14 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
>>     > On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 6:44 PM, Jon "maddog" Hall
>>     mailto:mad...@li.org>> wrote:
>>     >>>   I started looking into this more today, and quickly
>>     rediscovered how
>>     >>> much of a giant pile of kludges the IBM-PC is.
>>     >> The IBM PC was released in 1981.  You expected something other than
>>     >> "kludges"?
>>     >   Heh.  Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to
>>     > be sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
>>     > design by the infinite monkey method.  As much as I live and play in
>>     > the IBM-PC world... much like laws and sausage, it's best not to
>>     look
>>     > too closely at the innards.
>>     Compare the Apple model to the IBM model.
>>     Apple model is closed and controlled by one company.
>>     The IBM-PC was open. Many manufacturers of systems, mother boards, and
>>     just about every thing else. So it kind of falls into the infinite
>>     monkey paradigm.
>>
>>     But, as new technology comes around you will get kludges. Remember the
>>     640K memory limitation. There were all sorts of kludges to expand
>>     memory
>>     on the PC.
>>
>>
>> Actually, the IBM-PC was following the Apple ][.   Jobs hadn't gotten
>> into his control everything mode yet and Woz put the full schematics
>> and ROM in the back of the user manual.  That manual managed to teach
>> new users (who to be fair, were more technical than today's average
>> user) and get into the full technical detail that us geeks want.
>>
>> Nowadays manual are written on drool proof paper and I often wonder if
>> the author & developer ever saw the software on anything but a fresh
>> Windows XP sp2 install.  Or worse, the daily desktop they used that
>> looks nothing like a standard system.
>>
> They did follow the Apple ][ bus architecture. I had the handwritten Woz
> stuff in the manual. I unfortunately gave the old manual the the BCS
> Apple ][ group.

If I recall correctly, the Apple ][ bus gave us ROM on the I/O card to
bring the driver with the hardware, but addressing was controlled by
which slot you put the card in, and the signalling was closer to buffered
6502 signals, rather than buffered 8088 signals.  So I don't see that
as being any more of a forerunner of ISA than S-100 was.

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jerry Feldman]

On 02/01/2012 01:56 PM, Jon "maddog" Hall wrote:
> Jerry,
>
> I agree with you:
>
>> even the visionaries who envisioned the Internet (such as Vint Cerf and
>> J. C. R. Licklider and a few others) designed the Internet with 8-bit IP
>> addresses.
> It is easy to be a visionary when you are looking via the rear-view
> mirror.
>
> Warmest regards,
>
> md
>
Very true says one with sun glasses on the back of his head :-)

-- 
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Boston Linux and Unix
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jerry Feldman]

On 02/01/2012 10:15 AM, Tom Buskey wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:42 AM, Jerry Feldman  > wrote:
>
> On 01/31/2012 07:14 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 6:44 PM, Jon "maddog" Hall
> mailto:mad...@li.org>> wrote:
> >>>   I started looking into this more today, and quickly
> rediscovered how
> >>> much of a giant pile of kludges the IBM-PC is.
> >> The IBM PC was released in 1981.  You expected something other than
> >> "kludges"?
> >   Heh.  Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to
> > be sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
> > design by the infinite monkey method.  As much as I live and play in
> > the IBM-PC world... much like laws and sausage, it's best not to
> look
> > too closely at the innards.
> Compare the Apple model to the IBM model.
> Apple model is closed and controlled by one company.
> The IBM-PC was open. Many manufacturers of systems, mother boards, and
> just about every thing else. So it kind of falls into the infinite
> monkey paradigm.
>
> But, as new technology comes around you will get kludges. Remember the
> 640K memory limitation. There were all sorts of kludges to expand
> memory
> on the PC.
>
>
> Actually, the IBM-PC was following the Apple ][.   Jobs hadn't gotten
> into his control everything mode yet and Woz put the full schematics
> and ROM in the back of the user manual.  That manual managed to teach
> new users (who to be fair, were more technical than today's average
> user) and get into the full technical detail that us geeks want.
>
> Nowadays manual are written on drool proof paper and I often wonder if
> the author & developer ever saw the software on anything but a fresh
> Windows XP sp2 install.  Or worse, the daily desktop they used that
> looks nothing like a standard system.
>
They did follow the Apple ][ bus architecture. I had the handwritten Woz
stuff in the manual. I unfortunately gave the old manual the the BCS
Apple ][ group.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90




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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ben Scott]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 1:32 PM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:
>>   Though I do think a little more foresight on the part of IBM and
>> Microsoft both would have saved us all a lot of trouble down the road.
>
> At the time, (1) IBM was Big Iron and (2) the desktop computer market
> was tiny with only a few non-hobby systems available.

  I'm not sure what the first point has to do with this, but I don't
agree with the second: The lack of expectation of a huge market
doesn't justify all the drain bamage on the IBM-PC and MS-DOS.  I'm
not talking about things like the 1 MB address space.  That's a
limitation of the hardware at that price point at that time.
Inconvenient later, but it was a conscious design trade-off.  I'm
talking about how incredibly idiosyncratic, inconsistent, and outright
buggy the stuff was (and is), and/or cases where the poorer of two
equal cost options was chosen.  A small market doesn't justify that.

  One could argue the IBM 5150 itself was never intended to be
anything but a quick-and-dirty solution, and I might even buy that,
but the quick-and-dirty seems to have kept on well after the IBM-PC
architecture stopped being a stop-gap product line.  :)

  Then again, at $WORK we're currently trying to figure out the
atrocity known as Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, so maybe it's
just the fact that everything to do with a computer always sucks.  :-)

-- Ben

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

Jerry,

I agree with you:

> even the visionaries who envisioned the Internet (such as Vint Cerf and
> J. C. R. Licklider and a few others) designed the Internet with 8-bit IP
> addresses.

It is easy to be a visionary when you are looking via the rear-view
mirror.

Warmest regards,

md

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jerry Feldman]

On 02/01/2012 11:55 AM, Ben Scott wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:38 PM, Michael ODonnell
>  wrote:
>>> Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to be
>>> sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
>>> design by the infinite monkey method.
>> You have insulted an infinite number of monkeys.  IBM used to
>> publish the source codes for their BIOS ...
>   The design of the IBM 5150 [1] is only the start of the problem.
> When everyone and their brother has to solve all sorts of problems, in
> all sorts of different ways, things get very messy.
>
>   Note that I'm not saying there's a better way.  Much like democracy:
> It's the worst form of government, except for all the others.
>
>   Though I do think a little more foresight on the part of IBM and
> Microsoft both would have saved us all a lot of trouble down the road.
>  But then it probabbly wouldn't have the cheap and quick solution IBM
> wanted, nor would it have been as accessible to third-parties, and
> thus it wouldn't have succeeded, and we would all be complaining about
> someone else's cheap design instead.
>
> -- Ben
>
> [1] Quite possibly the most appropriate model number in history.
At the time, (1) IBM was Big Iron and (2) the desktop computer market
was tiny with only a few non-hobby systems available. I don't think that
anyone at that time could even envision the market explosion. Bill Gates
(and Microsoft) was the primary beneficiary. Many accountants were using
Apple ][ computers with VisiCalc, but it was the IBM brand that
legitimized the desktop PC in the business market. Once the PC came out
with some core applications, such as Lotus 123, the market just grew.
But the home computer market was still primarily hobbyist and gamers.
even the visionaries who envisioned the Internet (such as Vint Cerf and
J. C. R. Licklider and a few others) designed the Internet with 8-bit IP
addresses.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ben Scott]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:38 PM, Michael ODonnell
 wrote:
>> Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to be
>> sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
>> design by the infinite monkey method.
>
> You have insulted an infinite number of monkeys.  IBM used to
> publish the source codes for their BIOS ...

  The design of the IBM 5150 [1] is only the start of the problem.
When everyone and their brother has to solve all sorts of problems, in
all sorts of different ways, things get very messy.

  Note that I'm not saying there's a better way.  Much like democracy:
It's the worst form of government, except for all the others.

  Though I do think a little more foresight on the part of IBM and
Microsoft both would have saved us all a lot of trouble down the road.
 But then it probabbly wouldn't have the cheap and quick solution IBM
wanted, nor would it have been as accessible to third-parties, and
thus it wouldn't have succeeded, and we would all be complaining about
someone else's cheap design instead.

-- Ben

[1] Quite possibly the most appropriate model number in history.

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Tom Buskey]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:42 AM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:

> On 01/31/2012 07:14 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 6:44 PM, Jon "maddog" Hall 
> wrote:
> >>>   I started looking into this more today, and quickly rediscovered how
> >>> much of a giant pile of kludges the IBM-PC is.
> >> The IBM PC was released in 1981.  You expected something other than
> >> "kludges"?
> >   Heh.  Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to
> > be sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
> > design by the infinite monkey method.  As much as I live and play in
> > the IBM-PC world... much like laws and sausage, it's best not to look
> > too closely at the innards.
> Compare the Apple model to the IBM model.
> Apple model is closed and controlled by one company.
> The IBM-PC was open. Many manufacturers of systems, mother boards, and
> just about every thing else. So it kind of falls into the infinite
> monkey paradigm.
>
> But, as new technology comes around you will get kludges. Remember the
> 640K memory limitation. There were all sorts of kludges to expand memory
> on the PC.
>
>
Actually, the IBM-PC was following the Apple ][.   Jobs hadn't gotten into
his control everything mode yet and Woz put the full schematics and ROM in
the back of the user manual.  That manual managed to teach new users (who
to be fair, were more technical than today's average user) and get into the
full technical detail that us geeks want.

Nowadays manual are written on drool proof paper and I often wonder if the
author & developer ever saw the software on anything but a fresh Windows XP
sp2 install.  Or worse, the daily desktop they used that looks nothing like
a standard system.
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jerry Feldman]

On 01/31/2012 08:38 PM, Michael ODonnell wrote:
>
>> Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to be
>> sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
>> design by the infinite monkey method.
> You have insulted an infinite number of monkeys.  IBM used to
> publish the source codes for their BIOS in the little 3-ring
> binder full of docs they supplied with each PeeCee.  Let's be
> charitable and just say that they were clear evidence that
> the author(s) had little (if any) experience with assembler
> language programming or the 8088 architecture.  At best (we
> surmised at the time) they were an attempt to more or less
> blindly translate fragments of CP/M code from 8080 to 8088.
> Naturally, that glop was enshrined as a global standard...
We are still living in the shadow of the 8080. Limited registers (even
the x86-64). (I learned assembler on the PDP-8 :-)
Basically the PC-DOS was a hack in itself. There are many stories about
how Digital Research missed the boat there.

-- 
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Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jerry Feldman]

On 01/31/2012 07:14 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 6:44 PM, Jon "maddog" Hall  wrote:
>>>   I started looking into this more today, and quickly rediscovered how
>>> much of a giant pile of kludges the IBM-PC is.
>> The IBM PC was released in 1981.  You expected something other than
>> "kludges"?
>   Heh.  Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to
> be sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
> design by the infinite monkey method.  As much as I live and play in
> the IBM-PC world... much like laws and sausage, it's best not to look
> too closely at the innards.
Compare the Apple model to the IBM model.
Apple model is closed and controlled by one company.
The IBM-PC was open. Many manufacturers of systems, mother boards, and
just about every thing else. So it kind of falls into the infinite
monkey paradigm.

But, as new technology comes around you will get kludges. Remember the
640K memory limitation. There were all sorts of kludges to expand memory
on the PC.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90




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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Michael ODonnell]

> Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to be
> sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
> design by the infinite monkey method.

You have insulted an infinite number of monkeys.  IBM used to
publish the source codes for their BIOS in the little 3-ring
binder full of docs they supplied with each PeeCee.  Let's be
charitable and just say that they were clear evidence that
the author(s) had little (if any) experience with assembler
language programming or the 8088 architecture.  At best (we
surmised at the time) they were an attempt to more or less
blindly translate fragments of CP/M code from 8080 to 8088.
Naturally, that glop was enshrined as a global standard...
 
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jeffry Smith]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Ben Scott  wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Bill Freeman  wrote:
>> There are at least four different meanings of "floppy" in use here
>
>  I started looking into this more today, and quickly rediscovered how
> much of a giant pile of kludges the IBM-PC is.  I'm now far more
> confused than I was when I started.  So, to go back to the original
> question -- "Why are USB flash drives partitioned?" -- I now think
> it's because the Illuminati like OS/2.
>

My suspicion is a lot if it is because "we've always done it that
way."  Once started, it continued.

I haven't used WIndows in years, but my Linux box gladly takes USB
flash drives partioned or not, in a variety of filesystems (I've used
FAT, VFAT, ext2, ext3, xfs, haven't tried BTRFS yet).  However, all
the USB flash drives I've purchased have been partitioned with one
partion, formated with some FAT variety.

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[David Hardy]

To add to the general levity and amusement here, OS/2 is actually still
extant in some corners of the giant IBM complex up here in northern
Vermont.

And our issue laptops are Lenovo Thinkpads, with XP or 7, but we can, with
permission, put Red Hat, Fedora or Ubuntu on them.   IBM is heavy on Red
Hat up here and now there are reports they are also looking at Ubuntu for
servers.   We have about 2,500 RH x86 and blade servers in a dozen or more
clusters, running, so far, only 5.3 and 5.6, while looking to CentOS
releases for stability information as they come out before moving to newer
RH.



On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 7:14 PM, Ben Scott  wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 6:44 PM, Jon "maddog" Hall  wrote:
> >>   I started looking into this more today, and quickly rediscovered how
> >> much of a giant pile of kludges the IBM-PC is.
> >
> > The IBM PC was released in 1981.  You expected something other than
> > "kludges"?
>
>   Heh.  Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to
> be sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
> design by the infinite monkey method.  As much as I live and play in
> the IBM-PC world... much like laws and sausage, it's best not to look
> too closely at the innards.
>
> -- Ben
>
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ben Scott]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 6:44 PM, Jon "maddog" Hall  wrote:
>>   I started looking into this more today, and quickly rediscovered how
>> much of a giant pile of kludges the IBM-PC is.
>
> The IBM PC was released in 1981.  You expected something other than
> "kludges"?

  Heh.  Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to
be sure.  But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's
design by the infinite monkey method.  As much as I live and play in
the IBM-PC world... much like laws and sausage, it's best not to look
too closely at the innards.

-- Ben

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

>   I started looking into this more today, and quickly rediscovered how
> much of a giant pile of kludges the IBM-PC is.

The IBM PC was released in 1981.  You expected something other than
"kludges"?

md

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ben Scott]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Bill Freeman  wrote:
> There are at least four different meanings of "floppy" in use here

  I started looking into this more today, and quickly rediscovered how
much of a giant pile of kludges the IBM-PC is.  I'm now far more
confused than I was when I started.  So, to go back to the original
question -- "Why are USB flash drives partitioned?" -- I now think
it's because the Illuminati like OS/2.

-- Ben
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Kevin D. Clark]

Jerry Feldman writes:

> I agree. I don't think my Apple ][ floppies were partitioned. Back in
> the day there were a plethora of floppies. You had 8 in., 5 in. There
> were a number of Word Processors in the 70s that used floppies. The PC
> changed the landscape for both floppies and HDs, and also other
> removable media.



   
 Kevin's Elephant Memory Systems Tribute Page

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Never forget,

--kevin
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jerry Feldman]

On 01/31/2012 09:19 AM, Tom Buskey wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Jerry Feldman  > wrote:
>
> On 01/30/2012 05:08 PM, Bill Freeman wrote:
> > On 1/30/12, Ben Scott  > wrote:
> >> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe!
> >>  > wrote:
>  What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
>  Were they partitioned like HDDs?
> >>> Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
> >>> used the PC floppy drive controller interface.
> >>   Well, now, the hang-a-tape-drive-off-the-floppy-controller
> thing was
> >> something else entirely.  As far as I know, there was never any
> >> standard PC/BIOS/DOS/whatever interface for tape drives, so if
> someone
> >> made one of those they had to invent their own thing.
> >>
> >>   But I find it interesting that the "super floppies" behaved like
> >> floppies.  My understanding is (was) that the PC had a rather
> narrow
> >> idea of what a floppy disk could be (360, 1.2, 720, 1.44, 2.88,
> maybe
> >> a few more).  How did that work?
> > There are at least four different meanings of "floppy" in use here:
> >
>
>  
>
> Floppy disks predated the PC. There were many different types, sizes
> and formats. There were even floppies that had hard formatting (eg
> holes).
> The other difference between floppy devices and hard drives was
> the side
> of the FAT table. Floppies used a 12 or 16 bit FAT table. But, the
> original IBM PC was a floppy-only product.
>
>
>
> FWIW, Solaris, SunOS do have an idea of partitions on floppies, but it
> isn't used.  I think Ultrix and OSF/1 (later Digital Unix, Tru64) did too.
>
> I don't think my Apple ][ floppies were ever partitioned, but I had
> flippys :-/
>
I agree. I don't think my Apple ][ floppies were partitioned. Back in
the day there were a plethora of floppies. You had 8 in., 5 in. There
were a number of Word Processors in the 70s that used floppies. The PC
changed the landscape for both floppies and HDs, and also other
removable media.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Tom Buskey]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:

> On 01/30/2012 05:08 PM, Bill Freeman wrote:
> > On 1/30/12, Ben Scott  wrote:
> >> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe!
> >>  wrote:
>  What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
>  Were they partitioned like HDDs?
> >>> Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
> >>> used the PC floppy drive controller interface.
> >>   Well, now, the hang-a-tape-drive-off-the-floppy-controller thing was
> >> something else entirely.  As far as I know, there was never any
> >> standard PC/BIOS/DOS/whatever interface for tape drives, so if someone
> >> made one of those they had to invent their own thing.
> >>
> >>   But I find it interesting that the "super floppies" behaved like
> >> floppies.  My understanding is (was) that the PC had a rather narrow
> >> idea of what a floppy disk could be (360, 1.2, 720, 1.44, 2.88, maybe
> >> a few more).  How did that work?
> > There are at least four different meanings of "floppy" in use here:
> >
>
>

> Floppy disks predated the PC. There were many different types, sizes
> and formats. There were even floppies that had hard formatting (eg holes).
> The other difference between floppy devices and hard drives was the side
> of the FAT table. Floppies used a 12 or 16 bit FAT table. But, the
> original IBM PC was a floppy-only product.
>
>
>
FWIW, Solaris, SunOS do have an idea of partitions on floppies, but it
isn't used.  I think Ultrix and OSF/1 (later Digital Unix, Tru64) did too.

I don't think my Apple ][ floppies were ever partitioned, but I had flippys
:-/
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jerry Feldman]

On 01/30/2012 05:08 PM, Bill Freeman wrote:
> On 1/30/12, Ben Scott  wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe!
>>  wrote:
 What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
 Were they partitioned like HDDs?
>>> Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
>>> used the PC floppy drive controller interface.
>>   Well, now, the hang-a-tape-drive-off-the-floppy-controller thing was
>> something else entirely.  As far as I know, there was never any
>> standard PC/BIOS/DOS/whatever interface for tape drives, so if someone
>> made one of those they had to invent their own thing.
>>
>>   But I find it interesting that the "super floppies" behaved like
>> floppies.  My understanding is (was) that the PC had a rather narrow
>> idea of what a floppy disk could be (360, 1.2, 720, 1.44, 2.88, maybe
>> a few more).  How did that work?
> There are at least four different meanings of "floppy" in use here:
>
> 1: The vanilla, non-SCSI, PC diskette interface hardware was very low
> level.  It had logic level signals for Direction, Step, Motor Run, Write
> Protect, Door Open, Index Pulse, maybe more, which were bit banged,
> plus a chip that talked to the read/write head and which could do MFM
> generation/recovery of a serial data stream, including recognition of an
> "address block" and switching to read data or write data mode upon
> recognizing a desired address, and which could talk to the system
> DMA controller (and probably interrupt line, memory dims).  Most could
> do a variety of block sizes, which was probably used with tape drives,
> but rarely with diskettes.  So the hardware interface didn't care whether
> it was a floppy or not.
>
> 2. BIOS and/or OS drivers knew how to twiddle the above interface
> under the assumption that there was a floppy drive out there.  The
> timeout for motor off after idle for a while was entirely in software, and
> implemented here.  The door having been opened was detected here,
> and onece there was more than one PC format (single sided 160kB),
> the first block had to be read again to determine the format of the
> inserted disk.  Tape drives that attached to the floppy port had to add
> "TSR" drivers that knew how to manipulate the interface in whatever
> way the drive required.  Direction and Step were often used to move
> the single head to a different track on the tape.  Side select (I missed
> that above) would typically control the direction of the tape travel, so
> you could do serpentine track patterns.  The hardware in #1 didn't
> care.
>
> 3. At higher levels of the OS, it knew that this was a floppy because
> the BPB said so.  DOS didn't expect floppies to be partitioned, while
> it expected hard drives to be partitioned.  The hardware and low level
> drivers in #1 and #2 didn't know about or care about partitioning.
>
> 4. Floppy is a reasonable adjective for any disk shaped media
> that is flexible.  I'll take other folks word for it that things like LS-120
> are in this category.  That doesn't mean that they work with the
> floppy controller hardware, the BIOS code, or the standard OS
> stuff.
>
Floppy disks predated the PC. There were many different types, sizes 
and formats. There were even floppies that had hard formatting (eg holes).
The other difference between floppy devices and hard drives was the side
of the FAT table. Floppies used a 12 or 16 bit FAT table. But, the
original IBM PC was a floppy-only product.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Bill Freeman]

On 1/30/12, Ben Scott  wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe!
>  wrote:
>>> What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
>>> Were they partitioned like HDDs?
>>
>> Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
>> used the PC floppy drive controller interface.
>
>   Well, now, the hang-a-tape-drive-off-the-floppy-controller thing was
> something else entirely.  As far as I know, there was never any
> standard PC/BIOS/DOS/whatever interface for tape drives, so if someone
> made one of those they had to invent their own thing.
>
>   But I find it interesting that the "super floppies" behaved like
> floppies.  My understanding is (was) that the PC had a rather narrow
> idea of what a floppy disk could be (360, 1.2, 720, 1.44, 2.88, maybe
> a few more).  How did that work?

There are at least four different meanings of "floppy" in use here:

1: The vanilla, non-SCSI, PC diskette interface hardware was very low
level.  It had logic level signals for Direction, Step, Motor Run, Write
Protect, Door Open, Index Pulse, maybe more, which were bit banged,
plus a chip that talked to the read/write head and which could do MFM
generation/recovery of a serial data stream, including recognition of an
"address block" and switching to read data or write data mode upon
recognizing a desired address, and which could talk to the system
DMA controller (and probably interrupt line, memory dims).  Most could
do a variety of block sizes, which was probably used with tape drives,
but rarely with diskettes.  So the hardware interface didn't care whether
it was a floppy or not.

2. BIOS and/or OS drivers knew how to twiddle the above interface
under the assumption that there was a floppy drive out there.  The
timeout for motor off after idle for a while was entirely in software, and
implemented here.  The door having been opened was detected here,
and onece there was more than one PC format (single sided 160kB),
the first block had to be read again to determine the format of the
inserted disk.  Tape drives that attached to the floppy port had to add
"TSR" drivers that knew how to manipulate the interface in whatever
way the drive required.  Direction and Step were often used to move
the single head to a different track on the tape.  Side select (I missed
that above) would typically control the direction of the tape travel, so
you could do serpentine track patterns.  The hardware in #1 didn't
care.

3. At higher levels of the OS, it knew that this was a floppy because
the BPB said so.  DOS didn't expect floppies to be partitioned, while
it expected hard drives to be partitioned.  The hardware and low level
drivers in #1 and #2 didn't know about or care about partitioning.

4. Floppy is a reasonable adjective for any disk shaped media
that is flexible.  I'll take other folks word for it that things like LS-120
are in this category.  That doesn't mean that they work with the
floppy controller hardware, the BIOS code, or the standard OS
stuff.
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[OK? Im Deluxe!]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 02:49:40PM -0500, Ben Scott wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe!
>  wrote:
> >> What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
> >> Were they partitioned like HDDs?
> >
> > Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
> > used the PC floppy drive controller interface.
> 
>   Well, now, the hang-a-tape-drive-off-the-floppy-controller thing was
> something else entirely.  As far as I know, there was never any
> standard PC/BIOS/DOS/whatever interface for tape drives, so if someone
> made one of those they had to invent their own thing.
> 
>   But I find it interesting that the "super floppies" behaved like
> floppies.  My understanding is (was) that the PC had a rather narrow
> idea of what a floppy disk could be (360, 1.2, 720, 1.44, 2.88, maybe
> a few more).  How did that work?

I don't recall any special issues, but the LS120 SuperDisk drive
I had was the SCSI variant, so there were already drivers loaded
for the SCSI hardware.  It definitely presented to DOS/Windows as a
floppy drive, and would read/write/boot from normal 1.44MB floppies
using the same software interface used to access the 120MB disks.

-- 
mwl+gnh...@alumni.unh.edu  OpenPGP KeyID 0x57C3430B
Holder of Past Knowledge   CS, O-
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ben Scott]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe!
 wrote:
>> What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
>> Were they partitioned like HDDs?
>
> Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
> used the PC floppy drive controller interface.

  Well, now, the hang-a-tape-drive-off-the-floppy-controller thing was
something else entirely.  As far as I know, there was never any
standard PC/BIOS/DOS/whatever interface for tape drives, so if someone
made one of those they had to invent their own thing.

  But I find it interesting that the "super floppies" behaved like
floppies.  My understanding is (was) that the PC had a rather narrow
idea of what a floppy disk could be (360, 1.2, 720, 1.44, 2.88, maybe
a few more).  How did that work?

-- Ben

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[OK? Im Deluxe!]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:25:43AM -0500, Bruce Dawson wrote:
> On 01/30/2012 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe! wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 08:53:37PM -0500, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> >>>(I think 2.88 MB is the biggest floppy disk size defined by IBM-PC
> >>> conventions.  But if there are others, they're around that size.)
> >> What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
> >>
> >> Were they partitioned like HDDs?
> > Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
> > used the PC floppy drive controller interface.
>
> Sigh. I have to say: "Typically, yes". I did use a Bernoulli and IOMega 
> "flopticals" that acted like AT-style hard drives. I may still have a 
> few floating about in the barn. (But doubt if I have a working computer 
> that they'll connect to.)

Those are different beasts, really.  The floptical/LS-120 style
devices acted like floppy drives, because, well, they were floppy
drives, just with optical positioning to enable higher data
density.

The Bernoulli removable disks, and the later Iomega products (Zip,
Jaz, REV), and similar products by other vendors were all removable
"fixed" disks, using SCSI, IDE/ATAPI or Parallel Port (I think this
was SCSI over IEEE-1284, but I might be misremembering) interfaces,
and act as you describe.  They weren't 'flopticals', as there was no
optical component in the drives, they were purely magnetic media.

-- 
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Bruce Dawson]

On 01/30/2012 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe! wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 08:53:37PM -0500, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
>>>(I think 2.88 MB is the biggest floppy disk size defined by IBM-PC
>>> conventions.  But if there are others, they're around that size.)
>> What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
>>
>> Were they partitioned like HDDs?
> Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
> used the PC floppy drive controller interface.
>
Sigh. I have to say: "Typically, yes". I did use a Bernoulli and IOMega 
"flopticals" that acted like AT-style hard drives. I may still have a 
few floating about in the barn. (But doubt if I have a working computer 
that they'll connect to.)

Also, recent DVD-RAM drives look like hard drives. The older ones 
usually needed different drivers because of their speed.

--Bruce
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[OK? Im Deluxe!]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 08:53:37PM -0500, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> >   (I think 2.88 MB is the biggest floppy disk size defined by IBM-PC
> > conventions.  But if there are others, they're around that size.)
> 
> What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
> 
> Were they partitioned like HDDs?

Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
used the PC floppy drive controller interface.

-- 
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Holder of Past Knowledge   CS, O-
"Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ben Scott]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 8:53 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
 wrote:
>>   Because then we wouldn't be able to use a flash drive/card bigger
>> than 2.88 MB.
>>
>>   (I think 2.88 MB is the biggest floppy disk size defined by IBM-PC
>> conventions.  But if there are others, they're around that size.)
>
> What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
> Were they partitioned like HDDs?

  I've never used any of them, so I don't know.  :)

-- Ben

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Ben Scott  writes:
>
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
>  wrote:
> >> Flash drives wouldn't work as floppies, so they're treated as fixed
> >> disks.
> >
> > What does this mean? Why wouldn't USB sticks or MMC/SD cards work
> > `as floppies'?
> 
>   Because then we wouldn't be able to use a flash drive/card bigger
> than 2.88 MB.
> 
>   (I think 2.88 MB is the biggest floppy disk size defined by IBM-PC
> conventions.  But if there are others, they're around that size.)

What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?

Were they partitioned like HDDs?

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr."

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ben Scott]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
 wrote:
>> Flash drives wouldn't work as floppies, so they're treated as fixed
>> disks.
>
> What does this mean? Why wouldn't USB sticks or MMC/SD cards work
> `as floppies'?

  Because then we wouldn't be able to use a flash drive/card bigger
than 2.88 MB.

  (I think 2.88 MB is the biggest floppy disk size defined by IBM-PC
conventions.  But if there are others, they're around that size.)

  This isn't about terminology or how the user wants to use the flash
drive.  It's about how these things fit into the scary world of the
IBM-PC.  Thirty years of hardware, software, firmware, and interfaces
cobbled together by countless vendors.  Crufty old BIOS code, written
in assembler by people long gone and patched endlessly.  Several
different OSes (DOS, classic Windows, Win NT, several *nix variants),
each with their own software stack to handle disks, partitions, media
types, and so on.  Hundreds of low-level utilities.  Every single
thing with its own assumptions about how storage works.

  For anything to fit into that mess, it has to be shoe-horned into
the original design assumptions.

> Also..., what does the "fixed" in "fixed disk" mean?

  "Fixed" as in fixed-in-place.  Non-removable.

  Of course, USB flash drives *are* removable, but there's nothing in
the IBM-PC design (circa 1985) that allows for a third option.  It's
either a floppy or a fixed disk.  It wouldn't work as a floppy, so
it's a fixed disk.

> I do have a vague recollection of the SD/MMC architecture as... something
> that plugs directly into the host bus and contains its own IDE controller?

  I actually don't think that's right, but it doesn't really matter
for current discussion.  What matters is getting these things to work
in an old and eclectic IBM-PC ecosystem.

> And I know that USB drives identify themselves as `general mass storage'
> devices (generally...) ...

  That's the USB device class.  That's fine if the only thing involved
is USB stuff.  But when you want to use it with an IBM-PC, you're
adopting tons of historical baggage.  The device has to be *presented*
and *treated* in a way that's compatible.  So while the USB controller
can handle all sorts of things, the OS/BIOS/utilities/etc. are more
limited.

> The thing that's actually piqued my interest is that I recently received
> a whole-device (partitionless) FAT-formatted USB flash-stick... from
> a Mac user.

  Apple has strict control over their computing ecosystem.  While that
tends to annoy a lot of techie types, it does mean that they can
introduce new technologies easier, since they're the ones in charge.
Anything that doesn't do it their way is defined to be wrong (even if
it's one of their older products that's now declared "wrong").

>>   Next up: Why are console windows traditionally 80 columns wide?
>
> Because 80 is an optimal mix of `nice round radix-2 number' and
> `nice round radix-10' number?

  Because console windows/xterms are based on old-school dumb
terminals, which were traditionally 80 columns wide.  And *they* were
80 columns wide because the most common IBM punched  (paper) card was
80 columns wide.  And those cards are the size they are because they
were designed to fit into bins made for old US currency, circa late
1800s.

  If you're thinking that seems like a rather haphazard chain of
events, you're right.  Welcome to IT.  :-)

 -- Ben

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 16:34 -0500, michael miller wrote:
> The number of columns on a hollerith card.  Why are there 80 columns on
> a hollerith card?

Well, actually there were many different size "Hollerith cards", and
there were at least two sizes of "IBM cards", the familiar 80-column
card, and the smaller 96 column card.

Why 80 columns?  Probably a combination of having to have a hole large
enough that it could be accurately read at (relatively) high speed by
the sensing mechanisms of the day, yet still allow enough paper to be
existing on the card to give it structural integrity and to keep the
columns separate.  Some engineer was given the task of designing them.

Holes too small, sensors might miss the hole.  Holes too big, little
paper left for integrity.

The long-standing tale of the 80 column "IBM card" being that size was
due to a lot of cabinets and holders for dollar bills around, and the
"new" cards could be fit into those holders.

Then a few years later the government reduced the size of the dollar
bill, but by then there were probably more data cards in existence then
dollar bills, so the issue of getting manufacturers to make cabinets to
store the data cards was a non-issue.

md

> 
> Mike
> 
> On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 15:38 -0500, Ben Scott wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
> >  wrote:
> > > I've always wondered: why do the little USB flash sticks,
> > > SD cards, etc. all include a partition-table with one
> > > partition? Why don't they just use whole-device filesystems?
> > 
> >   Because they're not floppy disks, and fixed disks are assumed to
> > have a partition table.
> > 
> >   The design of the IBM-PC (I use the term "design" loosely) assumes
> > two types of disks: Floppy disks and fixed disks.  Floppy disks are
> > generally assumed to be of the few well-known types.  Fixed disks can
> > vary and one is expected to inquire as to the size.  Flash drives
> > wouldn't work as floppies, so they're treated as fixed disks.
> > 
> >   There's nothing insurmountable that keeps one from just putting a
> > filesystem on a USB flash drive.  Indeed, you can do it, and Linux
> > software will generally be just fine.  But it breaks a lot of
> > assumptions that could screw up BIOSes and other OSes, and/or lead to
> > those same things trying to write a partition table into your
> > filesystem.  And since your flash drive is technically laid out in a
> > non-standard manner (again, I use the term "standard" loosely), it
> > would arguably not be their fault.
> > 
> >   Next up: Why are console windows traditionally 80 columns wide?
> > 
> > -- Ben
> > ___
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> 
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> 

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email: mad...@li.org 80 Amherst St. 
Voice: +1.603.673.7875   Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
WWW: http://www.li.org

Board Member: Uniforum Association
Board Member Emeritus: USENIX Association (2000-2006)

(R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several
countries.
(R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used
pursuant
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 15:50 -0500, Jeffry Smith wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Ben Scott  wrote:
> >  Next up: Why are console windows traditionally 80 columns wide?
> >
> Because of the size of the US Dollar.

The 1887 US Dollar.

> 
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> 

-- 
Jon "maddog" Hall
Executive Director   Linux International(R)
email: mad...@li.org 80 Amherst St. 
Voice: +1.603.673.7875   Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
WWW: http://www.li.org

Board Member: Uniforum Association
Board Member Emeritus: USENIX Association (2000-2006)

(R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several
countries.
(R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used
pursuant
   to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus
   Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis
(R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other
   countries.

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Ben Scott  writes:
>
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
>  wrote:
> > I've always wondered: why do the little USB flash sticks,
> > SD cards, etc. all include a partition-table with one
> > partition? Why don't they just use whole-device filesystems?
> 
>   Because they're not floppy disks, and fixed disks are assumed to
> have a partition table.

I'm sure it's just me not understanding (which is why I asked
the question in the first place), but this sounds like
`begging the question' to me; I think the part that I don't get
is really...:

> Flash drives wouldn't work as floppies, so they're treated as fixed
> disks.

What does this mean? Why wouldn't USB sticks or MMC/SD cards work
`as floppies'?

At least from my view as a casual observer/user, they seem to be
a lot more similar to floppies than `fixed disks'.

Also..., what does the "fixed" in "fixed disk" mean?

I'm probably `letting myself be dumb' on this topic more than I should
(which is still something short of `playing devil's advocate'); I do
have a vague recollection of the SD/MMC architecture as... something that
plugs directly into the host bus and contains its own IDE controller?

And I know that USB drives identify themselves as `general mass storage'
devices (generally...), but they could well identify themselves as
anything; I know that I have a couple of U3 USB flash-sticks that
identify themselves as *multiple* devices, one of which is a `CD-ROM'
device, for example. And there *are* USB floppy-drives, aren't there?
Now I wonder what device-class those are in; grep'ing the web finds
a draft revision of the USB spec. that actually said:

General Mass Storage subclass. Mass Storage devices are normally
used in a random access fashion. The General Mass Storage subclass
includes storage devices such as the following:

* Conventional floppy
* Magneto-optical
* Zip (floptical)
* Syquest
* Hard drives


It looks like the final version of that document ended up very different,
but it still leaves me with the question of... what `wouldn't work'
about USB flash-sticks presenting more like floppies than HDDs?
It seems like a `floppy-like presentation' would be much more inline
with the Principle of Least Astonishment

>   There's nothing insurmountable that keeps one from just putting a
> filesystem on a USB flash drive.  Indeed, you can do it, and Linux
> software will generally be just fine.  But it breaks a lot of
> assumptions that could screw up BIOSes and other OSes, and/or lead to
> those same things trying to write a partition table into your
> filesystem.  And since your flash drive is technically laid out in a
> non-standard manner (again, I use the term "standard" loosely), it
> would arguably not be their fault.

The thing that's actually piqued my interest is that I recently received
a whole-device (partitionless) FAT-formatted USB flash-stick... from
a Mac user.

>   Next up: Why are console windows traditionally 80 columns wide?

Because 80 is an optimal mix of `nice round radix-2 number' and
`nice round radix-10' number? ☺

(like how `1.44-MB floppies' were actually 1474560 bytes?)

-- 
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[michael miller]

The number of columns on a hollerith card.  Why are there 80 columns on
a hollerith card?

Mike

On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 15:38 -0500, Ben Scott wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
>  wrote:
> > I've always wondered: why do the little USB flash sticks,
> > SD cards, etc. all include a partition-table with one
> > partition? Why don't they just use whole-device filesystems?
> 
>   Because they're not floppy disks, and fixed disks are assumed to
> have a partition table.
> 
>   The design of the IBM-PC (I use the term "design" loosely) assumes
> two types of disks: Floppy disks and fixed disks.  Floppy disks are
> generally assumed to be of the few well-known types.  Fixed disks can
> vary and one is expected to inquire as to the size.  Flash drives
> wouldn't work as floppies, so they're treated as fixed disks.
> 
>   There's nothing insurmountable that keeps one from just putting a
> filesystem on a USB flash drive.  Indeed, you can do it, and Linux
> software will generally be just fine.  But it breaks a lot of
> assumptions that could screw up BIOSes and other OSes, and/or lead to
> those same things trying to write a partition table into your
> filesystem.  And since your flash drive is technically laid out in a
> non-standard manner (again, I use the term "standard" loosely), it
> would arguably not be their fault.
> 
>   Next up: Why are console windows traditionally 80 columns wide?
> 
> -- Ben
> ___
> gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org
> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Jeffry Smith]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Ben Scott  wrote:
>  Next up: Why are console windows traditionally 80 columns wide?
>
Because of the size of the US Dollar.

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Ben Scott]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
 wrote:
> I've always wondered: why do the little USB flash sticks,
> SD cards, etc. all include a partition-table with one
> partition? Why don't they just use whole-device filesystems?

  Because they're not floppy disks, and fixed disks are assumed to
have a partition table.

  The design of the IBM-PC (I use the term "design" loosely) assumes
two types of disks: Floppy disks and fixed disks.  Floppy disks are
generally assumed to be of the few well-known types.  Fixed disks can
vary and one is expected to inquire as to the size.  Flash drives
wouldn't work as floppies, so they're treated as fixed disks.

  There's nothing insurmountable that keeps one from just putting a
filesystem on a USB flash drive.  Indeed, you can do it, and Linux
software will generally be just fine.  But it breaks a lot of
assumptions that could screw up BIOSes and other OSes, and/or lead to
those same things trying to write a partition table into your
filesystem.  And since your flash drive is technically laid out in a
non-standard manner (again, I use the term "standard" loosely), it
would arguably not be their fault.

  Next up: Why are console windows traditionally 80 columns wide?

-- Ben
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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Ben Scott  writes:
>
> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Michael ODonnell
>  wrote:
> > most filesystems do normally reside on partitions
> > but that's not actually inherent in the design of the system ...
> 
>   Not inherent in the design of *nix systems, certainly.  Or computers
> in general.  But in the original IBM pee sea fixed disks specs, fixed
> disks have a partition table.  A disk which lacks such is something of
> an anomaly.  This doesn't matter if you're only playing in the *nix
> playground, but if you start mixing in other OSes, or even stand-alone
> diagnostics, things can get ugly.  Something to keep in mind.

I've always wondered: why do the little USB flash sticks,
SD cards, etc. all include a partition-table with one
partition? Why don't they just use whole-device filesystems?

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr."

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images (was: drive recovery of dual-boot system)

[Ben Scott]

  As long as we're picking nits...

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Michael ODonnell
 wrote:
> most filesystems do normally reside on partitions
> but that's not actually inherent in the design of the system ...

  Not inherent in the design of *nix systems, certainly.  Or computers
in general.  But in the original IBM pee sea fixed disks specs, fixed
disks have a partition table.  A disk which lacks such is something of
an anomaly.  This doesn't matter if you're only playing in the *nix
playground, but if you start mixing in other OSes, or even stand-alone
diagnostics, things can get ugly.  Something to keep in mind.

-- Ben
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