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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.hawaii.edu!ames!tulane!darwin.sura.net!jvnc.net!nuscc!ntuix!eoahmad From: eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg (Othman Ahmad) Subject: Re: CDROM for 386bsd (Re: ftp software inc, their address is...) Message-ID: <1992Nov13.073252.9757@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg> Organization: Nanyang Technological University - Singapore X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6] References: <AWB.92Nov12101926@otter.uk.ac.ed.aisb> Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 07:32:52 GMT Lines: 39 Alan W Black (awb@ed.ac.uk) wrote: : : I suppose the whole question comes down to whether there are enough : people out there that would be willing to buy a CDROM set up for : (almost exclusive) use on 386bsd (and Linux). I suppose : eventually this will be the case but I'll just have to wait for : the time being. : I have thought about it for so long. The effort to establish a new format is not much because we can just copy a hard-disk image to the CDROM. The most important is to optimise the utilisation of the CDROM. Being a read only memory system, the McIntosh FS is better in being an extent based, but it is too far away form 386bsd. Maybe a slightly modified bsd FFS, can be used, with a few options: i) large block sizes, e.g. 32kbyte so that we can put 320k without any indirect inode pointers. Larger than this will cause too much fragmentation, because a fragment size of 1k will not be able to fill in the gaps. This method is attractive because there is no modification to 386bsd FFS, ii) Change it slightly to use extent based FS. I've no idea how difficult it will be. How much does it cost extra to use a new format? Given that a 386bsd CDROM is meant for 386bsd, there is little to be gained by using ISO9960(?). However the CDROM driver for 386bsd is only meant for Adaptec 1542 SCSI controller? I will not be able to use it! Maybe it is still safest to use ISO9960, at least I can use DOS to transfer files. -- Othman bin Ahmad, School of EEE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 2263. Internet Email: eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg Bitnet Email: eoahmad@ntuvax.bitnet