Re: Soft ejects
>>>>> "Ethan" == Ethan Benson <erbenson@alaska.net> writes:
Ethan> On 9/1/2000 Brian May wrote:
Brian> [1] Dos/windows copes with this problem in a different (IMHO
Brian> broken) way - it keeps track of which disk is inserted, and if
Brian> it needs to read/write to another disk, it complains to the
Brian> user to reinsert the original disk. Why is this mechanism
Brian> broken? For starters: some games will automatically eject a
Brian> CD-ROM and ask you to insert the next CD-ROM. For some reason,
Brian> windows will often decide that it still needed the original
Brian> CD-ROM, and ask you to reinsert it!!! It even goes as far as to
Brian> suggest that the CD-ROM might be dirty. Now thats what I call
Brian> "machine is smarter"!!!
Ethan> I never noticed that back when i briefly tinkered with win95,
Ethan> one thing I find interesting is windoze does NOT lock the cd
Ethan> drawer closed when a CD is in use like GNU/Linux and MacOS do,
Ethan> for example i insert a CD and run some program on it under
Ethan> win95 then press the eject button and it spits out the CD and
Ethan> windoze blue screened shortly thereafter.
Ethan> I have never seen windoze ask for a device back again, i didn't
Ethan> know it had such a function win* does not appear to really have
Ethan> a concept of `mounted' filesystems as far as i could tell.
Back in the sad, sad days when I was a Windoze programmer, we had to
make the APPLICATION PROGRAM do that. I.e. check for the existence of
the file D:\flagfile.000 and if not found, bitch at the user to insert
the correct CDROM again. Really high tech.
--
Ian Zimmerman
Lightbinders, Inc.
2325 3rd Street #324, San Francisco, California 94107
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