> On 20 Apr 2016, at 19:02, Paul Koning <paulkon...@comcast.net> wrote: > >> > > I don't know LIF, but the RT-11 file system is certainly simple. > > There are a couple of complications. First, you'd have to write a file > access utility for each guest OS. Given a simple enough file system that > isn't necessarily a huge burden. Then again, what might be simple, > requiringly only modest code, on one machine might be a major burden on > another simply because it has much less memory. >
For DEC stuff, Files-11 (level 2?) would probably work across most of the OSes. > Another problem is that there isn't any universal disk format, so you're > missing the foundation for a universal file format. Consider the IBM 1620, > with disks that have 200 digit sectors. Or (not that SimH supports it, but > another simulator does) CDC 6000 machines, where the sector size is 322 > 12-bit words. > Yup this would have to be machine (or even OS) specific. > Chances are that magnetic tape is more general; there aren't as many > encodings there. Basically it's 6 bits vs. 8 bits per frame. Everyone > understands variable length data, and unlabeled tapes are fairly widely > supported. Even if not, writing a labeled tape with a single file on it > isn't too hard. You're still stuck with machines that have no magnetic tape > support, there aren't all that many but certainly some. > > Paper tape is yet a third option, which is presumably unlabeled but often > transparent. (Not always, the 1620 comes to mind as a notorious example of a > machine that could read only coded tape with punches conforming to the code > it expects.) That’s a good point but doesn’t make organising files trivial. Sampsa
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