🚀 go-pugleaf

On 16 Mar 1999 19:04:25 GMT, "tunney" <tunney@redbrick.dcu.ie> wrote:

>Can anyone tell me about FCBs?
>And has anyone got examples?
>
Do you mean File Control Blocks like in CP/M and MS-DOS 1.0? (They
still exist, in theory, in Win98 or NT but if you use them, Bill Gates
shows up and cuts your keyboard cable and, in this case, he would be
right.)

>Do you mean File Control Blocks like in CP/M and MS-DOS 1.0?
Yep that is what I mean, I am doing assembly in college and we have to
delete files etc etc using fcbs

This information was taken from ASMEDIT help files.

AH    = 13h
DS:DX = pointer to an unopened FCB

Returns:

AL    = 00h if file deleted
      = FFh if file not found

Here is the format of a non extended FCB for MS-DOS 1.0:

offset       size      purpose
----------------------------------------------------------------------
00           byte      drive number(0 = default, 1 = A, 2 = B, ...
01           8 bytes   filename, left justified padded with spaces
09           3 bytes   filename extension, padded with spaces
0C           word      current block number relative to start of file
0E           word      logical record size in bytes
10           dword     file size in bytes
14           word      date created or last updated(standard format)
16           word      time of last write(standard format)
20           byte      current relative record number

Dave

saddle:

I love DOS based projects, but don't you think that by the time someone
leaves high school and enters a technical institution in a (supposedly) high
tech program (Electronic Engineering Technologist) that they would
understand DOS and WinXXXX ? I sure did, and considering that win 95/98 have
dos environments, why would they be trying to push DOS 6.22 and win 3.11?

        Just a question and all...

                                I Remain,
                                    Death Bringer

saddle wrote in message <7cocdq$3q0$1@winter.news.rcn.net>...
>deathbringer wrote in message <7cn4nq$s4g$1@winter.news.rcn.net>...
>>Last I heard from someone attending DeVry (I don't know personally, It's
>>been years scince I've been there) they are sill teaching win 3.11 and
>>dos6.2 to their first year EET's instead of 95/98 or NT. Just cause they
>are
>>teaching tunney manipulation of FCB's doesnt mean they expect him to have
a
>>use for the information. That is why I think most of the educational
>>institutions out there suck. They teach alot of crap for filler, and very
>>little usefull knowledge. I swear a person can learn 10 times faster using
>>the internet and thier own curiousity then they ever could in an
>educational
>>institution. The teaching methods are all wrong, and there is more focus
on
>>the program than the student.
>
>That's a bit harsh, for our business doing doing embedded assembler work,
>we'd never go near WinXXXX for serious machines that need to work long
term.
>There are lots of people in this area doing DOS based projects.
>
>Regards,
>
>Saddle (In the land of OZ)
>
>
>

MadAdmin:

    My response to your response as follows:

MadAdmin wrote in message <7cogaj$kca$3@news-2.news.gte.net>...
>On 17 Mar 1999 13:58:18 GMT, "saddle" <saddle@bigpond.com> wrote:

<snipped for berevity sake)>

>Do you use FCBs or file handles?

Occasionally, though not very often, it would depend on the hardware and OS.

>10 years ago we were staying away rom FCBs in DOS since file handles worked
a lot cleaner.

They did.

>My understanding was DOS didn't do FCBs nearly as well as CP/M did.

It doesn't

>Also the embedded stuff I dealt with back then used either
>proprietary/homegrown OSes that were small enough to fit in ROM.

Ah...the good old days :) When people who used computers actually understood
how they worked :)

 >Most of the stuff I dealt with was Z-80 based at the time but some of the
>devices used ladder logic rather than assembler for programming!

That makes some sense. Sounds like you have been around my friend.

>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>The sig.....
>
>"Bother," said Pooh.
>"Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes
>and lock phasers on the Heffalump.
>Piglet, meet me in Transporter Room Three."

                                            I Remain,
                                                Death Bringer

MadAdmin:

In response to your inquiries:

MadAdmin wrote in message <7cqshf$kep$3@news-2.news.gte.net>...
>On 17 Mar 1999 22:51:40 GMT, "deathbringer" <someone@home.com> wrote:
>
>>MadAdmin:
>>
>>    My response to your response as follows:
>>
>>MadAdmin wrote in message <7cogaj$kca$3@news-2.news.gte.net>...
>>>On 17 Mar 1999 13:58:18 GMT, "saddle" <saddle@bigpond.com> wrote:
>>
>><snipped for berevity sake)>
>>
>>>Do you use FCBs or file handles?
>>
>>Occasionally, though not very often, it would depend on the hardware and
OS.
>>
>
>What OS nowdays uses FCBs???

I ocasionally set up XT's and 286's and donate them to charities and small
interest groups, not to mention how many people I have given 386's to in the
last 6 months, kinda trying to keep the spirit of information freedom alive.
As to the OS? What ever the hardware can handle my friend :)

>
>>>10 years ago we were staying away rom FCBs in DOS since file handles
worked
>>a lot cleaner.
>>
>>They did.
>>
>>>My understanding was DOS didn't do FCBs nearly as well as CP/M did.
>>
>>It doesn't
>>
>>>Also the embedded stuff I dealt with back then used either
>>>proprietary/homegrown OSes that were small enough to fit in ROM.
>>
>>Ah...the good old days :) When people who used computers actually
understood
>>how they worked :)
>>
>
>Heh. Those were the fun days! My first few computers had full
>schematics. I even got hold of a macro assembler for Z80 and was
>putting macros in so I could do the few extra instructions on the 8085
>on that machine. I also soldered a ribbon cable to a socket to put
>inbetween the socket on the board and the Z80 so I could pull out all
>lines and build an external bus. Then before I ever got around to
>building my 8085 based robot I got sucked up into the DOS world and my
>CP/M, Z80, and 8085 projects all went by the wayside. It was actually
>painful when I got rid of all the old stuff!

Ah...The project days...I remember my first solar roller. Took me a bitch of
a time to figure out transistors at first though :) I miss playing around
too. Things were so much simpler then. You can do more now, but understand
less day by day.

 >I'm reacquiring a collection of odds and ends now but it's all primarily
486 and >newer stuff.

You would love my shed. Stacks and stacks of Sun Microsystem UNIX boxes from
85, old ataris, TSR80's, commodor 64's, christ, I think I even have a PET in
there (Or did I throw that old paper weight out last year?) God knows, the
place is just filled with shit accross quite a few computing eras :) I still
have too many XT's, Too Many 286's, and 386's etc, and one of these days
I'll fix them up and give them a home.

 >I think the smallest hard drive I have now is 70 Meg and it
>wasn't that many years ago that my largest one was that big!

Really? I still have a whole whack of MFM/RLL Drives, Tape Drives, and
seemingly all other forms of computer data storage (except punch cards,
someone offered me a punch card reader last year but I didn't have the room,
and I had no idea how to use the thing :) Hell, I think I even have a few
boxes with 8inch floppys. Not that the media is any good anymore.
Still...you never know.

>> >Most of the stuff I dealt with was Z-80 based at the time but some of
the
>>>devices used ladder logic rather than assembler for programming!
>>
>>That makes some sense. Sounds like you have been around my friend.
>>
>
>Heh heh heh. I took my first computer class in 1980 and my first
>program written on a PC was on a TRS-80 and my most in-depth assembler
>programming was done on Z80. Hmmm... the number 80 figured rather
>prominently in my life!

Pretty much the same here.

>Anyhow yes I've done a little bit of everything over the past 19 years!

Yes somehow I wish that we could bring back the days when a hacker was
considered an independant scientist bent on the betterment of man... Not a
bunch of children flaming each other in a newsgroup...

 >And to think that when I was a kid I wanted to be a professional bass
fisherman >when I grew up!!!!

I wanted to be an astronaut. hell who knows, maybe someday I still can.
Though I still fight the growing up concept all these years later (grin)

>>>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>The sig.....
>>>
>>>"Bother," said Pooh.
>>>"Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes
>>>and lock phasers on the Heffalump.
>>>Piglet, meet me in Transporter Room Three."
>>
>>                                            I Remain,
>>                                                Death Bringer
>>
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>The sig.....
>
>"We are the bastard daemon penguins from the sun and we're here to
>take over the world! BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

                                Take Care My Friend,

                                        I Am,
                                            Death Bringer

deathbringer wrote in message <7cpbln$c84$1@winter.news.rcn.net>...
>saddle:
>
>I love DOS based projects, but don't you think that by the time someone
>leaves high school and enters a technical institution in a (supposedly)
high
>tech program (Electronic Engineering Technologist) that they would
>understand DOS and WinXXXX ? I sure did, and considering that win 95/98
have
>dos environments, why would they be trying to push DOS 6.22 and win 3.11?
>


Something like?: Learning math with pencil & paper before using a
calculator.

Bob R

Robert:

    Like I said, by the time you get to a technical institute, you should
already understand some basic OS's  and GUI environments or you shouldn't be
there. It's beyond me why they waste the first termer's  time in such a
Manner when they could be focusing on UNIX (As they should be.) Instead they
are teaching the business program UNIX and NT, and The EET/ET programs
DOS6.22 and WIN 3.11. Doesn't sound to intelligent to me.

Just my opinion...

                                    I Am,
                                        Death Bringer

Robert Roseman wrote in message <7crlbk$hoo$1@winter.news.rcn.net>...
>
>deathbringer wrote in message <7cpbln$c84$1@winter.news.rcn.net>...
>>saddle:
>>
>>I love DOS based projects, but don't you think that by the time someone
>>leaves high school and enters a technical institution in a (supposedly)
>high
>>tech program (Electronic Engineering Technologist) that they would
>>understand DOS and WinXXXX ? I sure did, and considering that win 95/98
>have
>>dos environments, why would they be trying to push DOS 6.22 and win 3.11?
>>
>
>
>Something like?: Learning math with pencil & paper before using a
>calculator.
>
>Bob R
>
>

MadAdmin wrote in message <7cr67q$qco$2@news-2.news.gte.net>...
>On 18 Mar 1999 14:58:59 GMT, "deathbringer" <someone@home.com> wrote:
>
>>MadAdmin:
>>
>>In response to your inquiries:
>>
>>>What OS nowdays uses FCBs???
>>
>>I ocasionally set up XT's and 286's and donate them to charities and small
>>interest groups, not to mention how many people I have given 386's to in
the
>>last 6 months, kinda trying to keep the spirit of information freedom
alive.
>>As to the OS? What ever the hardware can handle my friend :)
>>
>
>Reminds me I need to take a peek at openDOS......

Wasn't that originally called DR DOS? (Digital Research Disk Operating
System)
I think I remember something about a Lawsuit put forth by M$ over the name
name and they had to change it. Am I thinking of the same OS?

>
>>>
>>>Heh. Those were the fun days! My first few computers had full
>>>schematics. I even got hold of a macro assembler for Z80 and was
>>>putting macros in so I could do the few extra instructions on the 8085
>>>on that machine. I also soldered a ribbon cable to a socket to put
>>>inbetween the socket on the board and the Z80 so I could pull out all
>>>lines and build an external bus. Then before I ever got around to
>>>building my 8085 based robot I got sucked up into the DOS world and my
>>>CP/M, Z80, and 8085 projects all went by the wayside. It was actually
>>>painful when I got rid of all the old stuff!
>>
>>Ah...The project days...I remember my first solar roller. Took me a bitch
of
>>a time to figure out transistors at first though :) I miss playing around
>>too. Things were so much simpler then. You can do more now, but understand
>>less day by day.
>>
>
>unfortunately the complexity of the circuits has gotten to be where
>you pretty much consider it to all be FM (Fuckin Magic) You just deal
>with what goes into the magic black box and what comes out and don't
>worry about how it does what it does inbetween.

Yeah well it does cool shit, but I still wish I had more control over it at
the hardware level than we do these days...I used to love tinkering, christ
I have no Idea how many soldering iron cores i've gone through...

>
>> >I'm reacquiring a collection of odds and ends now but it's all primarily
>>486 and >newer stuff.
>>
>>You would love my shed. Stacks and stacks of Sun Microsystem UNIX boxes
from
>>85, old ataris, TSR80's, commodor 64's, christ, I think I even have a PET
in
>>there (Or did I throw that old paper weight out last year?) God knows, the
>>place is just filled with shit accross quite a few computing eras :) I
still
>>have too many XT's, Too Many 286's, and 386's etc, and one of these days
>>I'll fix them up and give them a home.
>>
>
>Between a roof collapsing on a storage shed and a relationship with a
>woman who thought all that I had left was junk I pretty much lost all
>my old stuff. :( It's a tossup though whether I miss the Kaypro II or
>the Commodore 64 more. I miss both much more than I miss my ex!! heh.

I can see your point there :)

>> >I think the smallest hard drive I have now is 70 Meg and it
>>>wasn't that many years ago that my largest one was that big!
>>
>>Really? I still have a whole whack of MFM/RLL Drives, Tape Drives, and
>>seemingly all other forms of computer data storage (except punch cards,
>>someone offered me a punch card reader last year but I didn't have the
room,
>>and I had no idea how to use the thing :) Hell, I think I even have a few
>>boxes with 8inch floppys. Not that the media is any good anymore.
>>Still...you never know.
>>
>
>I've done enough card sets in an emulator that I could probably fake
>it with a punch card reader! I worked at a place where we had reports
>that expected punch cards so they had a bit of software where you
>setup in an editor the data as if it was a punch card. They still ran
>a few actual readers but almost all input was via terminal.

Do you remember the name of that emulator?

 >I bet it's
>been 10 years since I've used an 8 inch floppy! Those things hard or
>soft sectored???

Hard I'm pretty sure. IBM first came out with them 1971, but they were
pretty much made obsolete after 1976, I think that's when IBM came up with
the 5 1/4. I don't think I even have anything to read them with though :)

>Depending on how much wear is on them and the storage
>conditions you might be surprised and find they're still usable.

I think that box is pretty much air tight, and they're all in sleeves, so if
I had something that could still use them they might work.

>>>> >Most of the stuff I dealt with was Z-80 based at the time but some of
>>the
>>>>>devices used ladder logic rather than assembler for programming!
>>>>
>>>>That makes some sense. Sounds like you have been around my friend.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Heh heh heh. I took my first computer class in 1980 and my first
>>>program written on a PC was on a TRS-80 and my most in-depth assembler
>>>programming was done on Z80. Hmmm... the number 80 figured rather
>>>prominently in my life!
>>
>>Pretty much the same here.
>>
>>>Anyhow yes I've done a little bit of everything over the past 19 years!
>>
>>Yes somehow I wish that we could bring back the days when a hacker was
>>considered an independant scientist bent on the betterment of man... Not a
>>bunch of children flaming each other in a newsgroup...
>>
>
>We get a lot of that but some of kids are OK and are here to learn
>just like us!

Well I hope they wan't to learn as much as I want them to teach. We all have
something to offer each other, and collectively, we are stronger as a whole.
As I am known to say, there is wisdom in a council of many.

>
>> >And to think that when I was a kid I wanted to be a professional bass
>>fisherman >when I grew up!!!!
>>
>>I wanted to be an astronaut. hell who knows, maybe someday I still can.
>>Though I still fight the growing up concept all these years later (grin)
>>
>
>Speaking of astronauts - unless things go wrong I plan on meeting
>Story Musgrave this summer. If you care to see what that's all about
>and what yet another of my hobbies is check out
>http://www.ipmsnats99.com

Very cool stuff my friend, I wish I could go too, but my vacation is planned
for Dec. this year, I'm off to Scotland, and I shant be back till Jan. I
have the Biggest New Year Celebration in the world to go to ;) & I won't be
back till I'm sober (Hopefully not to quickly)(grin)

<Sigs. chopped for berevity>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>The sig.....
>
>During his light-hearted keynote, Torvalds
>showed a slide predicting what his grandchildren
>will say about computing. Rounding out the list:
>"Microsoft? They used to do computers, right?"

Sometimes I wonder my friend.

                                        I Am
                                            Death Bringer

Deathbringer wrote:

>teaching tunney manipulation of FCB's doesnt mean they expect him to have a
>use for the information. That is why I think most of the educational
>institutions out there suck. They teach alot of crap for filler, and very


I think that I should clean things up, we were asked to write code to delete
files, and as I had a copy of a prog that renames (that I got of the net)
stuff I thought that it would be easier on me to alter it than to write
something else. I hadn't realised that fcbs were so "dangerous and useless",
after reading the thread here I asked my lecturer about them and he said the
same as you. It was not the college that made me learn fcbs it was me being
lazy.

>>>unfortunately the complexity of the circuits has gotten to be where
>>>you pretty much consider it to all be FM ([deleted word] Magic) You just
deal
>>>with what goes into the magic black box and what comes out and don't
>>>worry about how it does what it does inbetween.

Well then you may like to know that I'm kind of interested in trying to
design a microprocessor, or at least a game-enhancing chip.  I probably
won't ever get past emulating the electronic circuits on a computer, but I
might actually design it with the transistors I have from broken electronic
devices, and my electronics lab kits.  I also have a few farily simple chips
(like quad AND gates and 8-bit flip flop) that I might use to reduce the
physical size of my experiment.

>> >I bet it's
>>>been 10 years since I've used an 8 inch floppy! Those things hard or
>>>soft sectored???
>>
>>Hard I'm pretty sure. IBM first came out with them 1971, but they were
>>pretty much made obsolete after 1976, I think that's when IBM came up with
>>the 5 1/4. I don't think I even have anything to read them with though :)
>>
>
>Some of the older CP/M stuff I've played with used them and I think
>the TRS-80 model 2 might have used soft sectored ones. I heard in the
>last days of them they had the soft sectored ones up to a fairly
>decent capacity but I forget how much. Seems to me it was like 200K or
>300K or better.
>
>>>Depending on how much wear is on them and the storage
>>>conditions you might be surprised and find they're still usable.
>>
>>I think that box is pretty much air tight, and they're all in sleeves, so
if
>>I had something that could still use them they might work.

There's a simple way to find out whether they are hard or soft sectored (if
looking at the label doesn't work):  Near the large hole in the center of
the disk, there should be a small round hole in the casing where you can see
the disk surface.  If you rotate the disk in the casing, you should see one
or more smaller holes in the disk surface.  If there is only one hole in the
entire cylinder around the disk, it is soft sectored.  If you see a hole
every 1/4-1/2 inch or so, then it is hard sectored.  The floppy drive reads
the holes when formatting the disk (and maybe at other times in the older
drives), and begins the sector or track there, depending on the hard or
softness.  I've used 8 inch disks on a Micom word processing computer when I
was little (maybe around 10 years ago).  I got it to do a lot of stuff no
one would have ever expected it to do, like drawing dot-matrix pictures by
setting the pitch and line spacing very small, so the letters would print
very close to each other.  Then I typed periods wherever I wanted it to
print a dot.  It took a long time, but it was kind of fun.

Just because old computers are outdated doesn't mean you can't use them
anymore.  A few days ago, I worked on a program in Turbo Pascal 5.5 on my
8088 computer with a VGA monitor.  Apparently, the monitor is getting old
and the picture on the screen got out of size.  Part of the text was covered
up by the bezel of the monitor and was therefore unreadable.  Since that
monitor does not have size controls, I wrote a little program which
reprograms the registers on the VGA card to decrease the size of the picture
and fit it on the screen.  It does actually work!

I think this thread is getting off-topic.  Maybe you'll see a post from me
in some electronics design newsgroup (if I can find anything like that)
sometime.

-Jerry Orlando
--------------------
I enjoy optimizing assembly language procedures so much that occasionally I
get carried away and forget about the rest of the program...
I also program in C++, Pascal, Visual Basic, and I know the old Basic, but
don't use it much anymore.

tunney:

tunney <tunney@redbrick.dcu.ie> wrote in message
news:7cuhm0$d51$1@winter.news.rcn.net...
> Deathbringer wrote:
>
> >teaching tunney manipulation of FCB's doesnt mean they expect him to have
a
> >use for the information. That is why I think most of the educational
> >institutions out there suck. They teach alot of crap for filler, and very
>
>
> I think that I should clean things up, we were asked to write code to
delete
> files, and as I had a copy of a prog that renames (that I got of the net)
> stuff I thought that it would be easier on me to alter it than to write
> something else. I hadn't realised that fcbs were so "dangerous and
useless",
> after reading the thread here I asked my lecturer about them and he said
the
> same as you. It was not the college that made me learn fcbs it was me
being
> lazy.

Interesting. I stand corrected.

                                I Am,
                                    Death Bringer