FAT16 uses a 32 bit number. BUT, somebody at MICROS~1
used a
"signed long".
Therefore, the capacity limits are from -2G to 2G, instead of 0 to 4G
The same unsigned long issue also applied to file sizes.
Most versions of MS-DOS and PC-DOS had limits on the file size
of -2G to +2G, instead of 0 to 4G
(corrected in NT?)
My hard drive was getting too crowded. So, . . .
I used DEBUG to step on the DIR (Track 0 sector 6) of a floppy to create
some -2G files. Dos dutifully reported the file size as -2147483648
Great! So, all I would need to do is copy a few of those to my hard
drive, and the free space should go up 2G for each, right?
It didn't work. :-(
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at
xenosoft.com