Re: DOS, was Re: Ada Tutor Web Site Shutting Down

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Rugxulo" <rugxulo@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:b31ad9d8-659d-40b8-8776-61b7334beb9d@s11g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...
...
>> - More than once I had to give up a floppy or hard disk whose
>> FAT got shot. The BIOS would help with reading out relevant
>> sectors; but if the dangling pointer had hit the right sector,
>> no BIOS would help, A few companies were flourishing because
>> they provided forensic analysis and repair; had DOS had a
>> quality file system, PC Tools, Norton, etc. would have had
>> a different business plan.
>
>FAT is primitive, yes, and I do think DOS needs newer file systems.

But it was ways better that the floppy file system in CP/M, especially the 
original everything is stored in 128 byte blocks file system!

And floppies fail often. And sometimes they fail so you can't read the 
directory. You have to expect that, and I don't think any file system could 
really protect against that (RAM backup makes no sense for floppies, since 
their whole advantage is the ability to change them and move them).

In any case, it's silly to look at DOS, designed around 1980, and make 
assumptions about it based on what we can do today with a 5000 times more 
memory and a processor that is 5000 times faster.

                             Randy.