W95fs

This text is from my arcives. It may be out of date, but I thought it should be preserved.

The W95fs (short for Windows 95 filesystem) allows you to read the long filenames, which are stored by W95 on (Hard)Disks.
Archive (7411 Bytes)

Stopped! This Project has stopped, because there a filesystem in the AmiNet, which can really read the W95 Disks, it can be found under disk/misc/xfs208b.lha (or similar). And the Commercial product CrossDos can read and write W95 long filenames.

Introduction The filesystem will create a virtual disk, constans much softlinks with the long filenames to the original device. Only the rootdirectory will be read. Subdirectories can be accessed via the softlinks. The comment of each link is the link itself (use list to see that). The disk ist write protected. But you can write to the links. Note on softlinks:
Many programs are interpreting softlinks as directories (e.g. dir, list, Workbench). If you want to copy the files with c:copy you have to specify each file, because if you're using a pattern, copy will interpert all the links as dirs, what fails.
Only some directory tools (like the ls command from AFS) will display the size of the files (which I set correct) correct.
A friend told me that DOpus5.5 read all links correct.
Requerements AmigaOS 2.04 (V37) or higher.

Usage
The startupstring will be parsed with the following template:
DRIVE/A,NAME/A,DEVICE/K,UNIT/N/K,STARTSEC/N/K,DISKINFO/K
The options are the folliwings: DRIVE is the drive, wich contains the MS-DOS/W95 filesystem, without the colon (e.g. DF0, PC0, PC-C). This drive must a trackdisk orientated device (can crach with SER, PAR, RAM). NAME the name for the disk on workbench. DEVICE optionally the device from which should be read. Normally it will be extracted from the DRIVE parameter at startup. But if you're e.g. using MFS: DF0 can be the trackdisk.device on startup, but it must be the mfm.device, with this parameter you can fix it. UNIT the unit of the device, which should opened. Normally will this numer extracted from the DRIVE. STARTSEC the start sector (not cylinder) of the partition. Make only on harddisks sence. Normally will this number extracted from the DRIVE. DISKINFO allows you to specify the "Disk.info", which should be used by worbench. A softlink will be created. If you let this point to the disk (e.g. "DF0:dinfo") each disk has it own W95 icon. If you let point it to a harddisk (e.g. "S:w95_disk.info") all W95 disks has one Icon. Snapshot to the icon is possible.


Known Bugs I do'nt have the fully information about the W95-FAT. Obe byte in each W95-extra entry looks like a checksum, but I do'nt know to how to use it. So its possible that a long filename will used for a wrong file. If you're mounting and unmounting the handler with the mfm.device it can crach at the 4th or up try.

Note I do not plan to write a filesystem to read the subdirectories / write to disk. If you're interested in the source / the information I've summed about the W95fs contact me. I'm planning to optimize it.

History Version 0.9 (1997-05-29)
· First release.