From: Brandon S. Allbery (bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org)
Date: 05/20/93 

From: bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery)
Subject: Re: Linux "is" good. But, "bug"...
Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 01:42:06 GMT

In article <24500@mindlink.bc.ca> Steve_Goyette@mindlink.bc.ca (Steve Goyette) writes:
>>But friends of mine who use AmigaDOS are highly surprised that Linux
>>would *require* this hardware signal, since they assert that it is a
>>difficult task to find a floppy drive that *does* support the disk-
>>change signal (required by AmigaDOS, ignored by MS-LOSS).
>
>Acutally, MS-LOSS DOES need the disk change signal. Without it, you would
>read the same directory on virtually every disk you inserted into your drive.

Incorrect. Drives that don't support the disk change signal are still used
even in newer machines, and operating systems need to check for the support.
Look at the documentation for DOS HyperDisk sometime; it discusses this in the
context of write-behind caching on floppy drives. (There's probably more
relevant documentation somewhere, but I don't know of it; I recall the above
from my days in the shadow... :-)

++Brandon 

-- 
Brandon S. Allbery         kf8nh@kf8nh.ampr.org          bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org

It's not too late to turn back from the "Gates" of Hell...
Linux: the free 32-bit operating system, available NOW. Why waaaaaait for NT?