2 Jan
2010
2 Jan
'10
11:48 p.m.
On 2 Jan 2010 at 14:24, Fred Cisin wrote:
Instead of messing with my boot sector, howzbout
creating a bogus
directory entry, as is done for disk name, or long filenames, at the
physical end of the directory sectors.
This is particularly ironic since Microsoft had complete control over
what constituted an MS-DOS floppy boot sector since the beginning.
Indeed, they even changed it a couple of times.
The annoying thing about the boot sector rewrite is that it happens
if the floppy is writable (i.e. write-protect is off); it doesn't
matter if a file was opened on the floppy for writing or not.
I'm too lazy to verify this, but I believe that most standard DOS
floppy formats do not fully occupy the last sector of the FAT with
allocation information. So writing the volume tracking data (if you
had to do it) at the end of the last FAT sector in the second FAT
copy would likely do the least damage.
In any case, why track volume information if (a) the floppy doesn't
have files open for writing and (b) one can handle write-protected
floppies anyway?
But then, Microsoft has the top technical talent, don't they?
--Chuck