I envy newbies

[Andrew Dalke]

Warning: thread shift approaching :)

Aahz (@netcom.com) said:
> I'm suspicious; unless my memory is faulty, I *know* there were
> filesystems with a maximum of 64 root entires.  Maybe it was just floppy
> disks, though.

For nostalgia's sake, I keep a copy of "The Peter Norton
Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC" - from back when the AT was
hot stuff.

In the section describing file layout formats it says that each
directory block on a floppy can hold 16 entries, and single sided
disks have 4 blocks (double sided has 7), so there are 64 possible
entries for the directory block of a single-sided (8 or 9 sectors)
floppy.  Subdirectories are treated differently.

If you have a hard disk, the size changes depending on the size
of the disk.  The smallest example he gives has a single sector
for the FAT, which supports up to 64 root directories.

So these are the limit you might be recalling?

						Andrew
						dalke at acm.org