russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) (06/02/90)
In article <3874@milton.acs.washington.edu> ejbell@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Bell) writes: >Please don't flame me if: > 1) I'm asking a stupid question You aren't > 2) I'm in the wrong newsgroup Well, comp.sys.mac is supposed to be obselete, but I don't think any of the specific groups would fit this question, so I've redirected followups to comp.sys.mac.misc (the new general group) > >I'm a competent and experienced programmer (I know my shit) but I don't know >anything about optical disks or much about mac programming. > >I am investigating the feasibility of a project that would read an existing >database that is available on optical disk (High Sierra format) for computers >running ms-dos. I want it to run on a mac. > >I presume I need a program/routine that makes a dos-formatted optical disk >appear to be an "on-line" mac disk, or something that directly reads and >interprets the dos file-system and handles all of the file-system functions. > >Is this commonly done and/or are there libraries/programs that handle this? >If so, what are they? You are in luck-- Apple has such a thing available in their CD-ROM software at apple.com-- it's called Foreign File Access (and it's associated files, Audio CD Access, ISO 9660 Access, and High Sierra Access). It's also available on the developer CD, and comes with Apple CD-ROMs. It makes the High Sierra disk look exactly like a mac disk except that you can't tell how many files are on the disk. >A final question. Just out of curiosity, did the ms-dos file-system have to >be tweaked to deal with the large files you can create on an optical, or was >it able to handle it in its original design? High Sierra isn't MS-DOS at all. It is entirely different, and MS-DOS computers also need additional software to read it. -- Matthew T. Russotto russotto@eng.umd.edu russotto@wam.umd.edu ][, ][+, ///, ///+, //e, //c, IIGS, //c+ --- Any questions?
blob@Apple.COM (Brian Bechtel) (06/03/90)
russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) writes: >In article <3874@milton.acs.washington.edu> ejbell@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Bell) writes: >>I am investigating the feasibility of a project that would read an existing >>database that is available on optical disk (High Sierra format) for computers >>running ms-dos. I want it to run on a mac. >> >>I presume I need a program/routine that makes a dos-formatted optical disk >>appear to be an "on-line" mac disk, or something that directly reads and >>interprets the dos file-system and handles all of the file-system functions. >> >>Is this commonly done and/or are there libraries/programs that handle this? >>If so, what are they? >You are in luck-- Apple has such a thing available in their CD-ROM >software at apple.com-- it's called Foreign File Access (and it's >associated files, Audio CD Access, ISO 9660 Access, and High Sierra >Access). It's also available on the developer CD, and comes with Apple >CD-ROMs. It makes the High Sierra disk look exactly like a mac disk except >that you can't tell how many files are on the disk. Actually, you can find out how many files are on the disc by doing a GetInfo on all the folders of the disc and adding them up. I warn you; it takes a VERY long time when you have lots of files on the CD. That's why we made the change. To reiterate what Matthew says, copying the files "Foreign File Access" and "High Sierra File Access" (or "ISO 9660 File Access") into your System Folder and rebooting gives you a system that understands High Sierra format volumes (or ISO 9660 format.) >>A final question. Just out of curiosity, did the ms-dos file-system have to >>be tweaked to deal with the large files you can create on an optical, or was >>it able to handle it in its original design? MS-DOS has a volume limit of 32Megabytes. The MS-DOS CD-ROM extensions have to patch the file system to get around this limit. The Mac file system's limits are much bigger. >High Sierra isn't MS-DOS at all. It is entirely different, and MS-DOS >computers also need additional software to read it. High Sierra isn't anybody's file system. (Although it bears a strong resemblance to VMS.) It's meant to be operating system independent. --Brian Bechtel blob@apple.com "My opinion, not Apple's"