re: re: 2.88MB images

Hi,
I think the current mkdosfs (dosfstools) versions is 2.8, not 0.4,
but whatever... By the way, of course, DOS in DOS, but DOSEMU allows
me to test 4 different FreeDOS kernels in just a minute and some nice
similar things, because I can use Unix tools to work with DOS files
and because I can have serveral DOSEMU windows open at the same time.

For the 2.88 MB SYS Problem:
- It would be easier to allow SYS to SYS RAMDISKs that allowing it to
  SYS IMAGES. Just my 2c, ask the SYS maintainer for details...
- Then, you still need "write RAMDISK to IMAGE" as a tool. If SYS would
  not work, an alternative would be to use TAIL (GNUish tools for DOS)
  and COPY /B to chop off the boot sector from the image and glue another
  boot sector in. You can derive that boot sector from a 1.44 MB one using
  a DEBUG script, or maybe one could extend SYS to allow manual override
  of the geometry while writing a boot sector to a file (not really useful
  if you ask me)
- You can even use DEBUG combined with COPY /B to make an image of an
  arbitrary drive. However, you need to run DEBUG several times because
  it is quite limited with respect to file sizes (I mean: Use DEBUG to
  write parts of the image to files and then glue them together using
  COPY /B).

I think RAWRITE should be changed to write an image to RAMDISK if needed.
This would give us a MOUNT-like command (of course, not exactly: Writing
back from RAMDISK to image does not happen immediately, you need to RAREAD
before shutting down). Sure enough, the RAMDISK has to be sized properly
for this to work.

Bonus question: Apart from the TSBAT collection, do you know any program
or AWK / SED command that can - without using temporary files preferrably
- write the DRIVE (without ":") and DIRECTORY of the current working
directory of the current drive into two environment variables? Plus I would
need a tool that splits a filename into DRIVE (without ":"), DIRECTORY,
NAME and EXTENSION (without "." preferrably, and in all cases DIRECTORY
without †the "\" in the end preferrably) and writes those parts into
environment variables? I know there is a simple PASCAL library function for
such tasks, but then I need an additional EXE. Hm, have to think about which
is worse, a nice PASCAL program that stores drive/directory (no arguments)
or drive/directory/name/extension (of its argument) into environment
variables or some AWK/SED scripts to do the same. AWK/SED are part of the
GNUish tools for DOS (as is Perl 4 - anybody ever tried that one??? I mean,
DOS is so limited with RAM and Perl uses so much of it, plus 4 is not, uhm,
a recent version).

Eric
â€~h