re: Re: Timestamp problems resolved (3-timestamp-entries, defrag, scand

Hi all,
interesting to know that there are actually tools that check
the two bonus timestamp fields of short filenames at all!
Thanks Bart for adding proper initialization, I would have
been happy with 0.0.1980 anyway. So those seem to have been
Georges problems. Solved :-).
Well, the clock problems are not solved yet, I suggest to
put a new battery on the mainboard (older boards have a
plug/jumper for this, the old battery is soldered to the
board. Newer boards use exchangeable lithium "coin" cells).

I had hoped that the NEW defrag tool would work by now.
If it does not defrag yet, maybe it can at least sort
directories and/or check the filesystem for errors?
About the scandisk tool: I seem to remember that a new tool
is underway but development has paused for a while?

The CURRENT scandisk only looks good but does virtually
nothing. The CURRENT defrag works at most for floppies.

I RECOMMEND to use PC-Mag defragr (freeware, even open
source, but not GPL) if FAT16 is enough for you. Sometimes
defragr refuses to work when it runs out of memory. For
scandisk, I recommend booting Linux and using dosfsck 2.8,
part of "e2fstools" now (if you search rpmfind.net for
dosfsck, you get the wrong package). Uhm, Freudian error.
I mean DOSFSTOOLS. Hopefully somebody can take diskio.*
from E2FSTOOLS to create a DJGPP 32bit DOS port. I have
contacted the dosfsck maintainer but he is out of time so
he cannot do any substantial programming. DJGPP should
make the port pretty easy as it "simulates" /dev/... access
to raw disks as far as I understand diskio.* ... AND it
uses 32bit "int" and DPMI malloc. Dosfsck can probably use
5 MB of RAM or more to fix a severely corrupted filesystem
even in FAT16 mode (can also do FAT32 and LFN, cool...)
according to my estimate, so do not even try to port to
16bit DOS.
For 16bit DOS, we just have to wait for (or help with!)
the NEW FreeDOS scandisk project.

By the way, you do not need to boot Windows. MS scandisk
and defrag ran with FreeDOS when I tried "ages" ago,
but the memory driver config (XMS / EMS / UMB) could be
tricky. And DR DOS (almost-freeware) scandisk and defrag
should work with FreeDOS, too.

Eric


PS: dosfsck can be found at:
ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/Linux/LOCAL/dosfstools/ (main site)
Please contact me if you can help with / do the DOS DJGPP 32bit
port, as I am already in contact with the author. Or mail us both ;-).