[Info-vax] Looking for suggestions for new $GETDVI item codes

[JF Mezei]

On 15-01-15 11:51, Stephen Hoffman wrote:

> disruptive, no matter how those changes are rolled out.  Modern disk 
> blocks are now 4096 bytes, and there's more than a little code around 
> that assumes 512-byte blocks, and there's more than a little code that 
> assumes that disk sizes will fit in longwords,


Would sector/block size be a driver level issue that is more or less
irrelevant to applications ?

If I do a "seek" in an application, I am not too concerned with which
sector it is in as I give a relative offset from start of file.

With a block size of 4k, and an application that assumes 512byte
sectors, doesn't this simply become similar to assuming a file with
512byte records ?  Currently, am I not able to rewrite 100 bytes in a
file at the application level and let the "system" figure out how to do
it (akaL read block, replace 100 bytes, write block). Does it really
matter what size the block is to the application ?

Sure apps that thought ther would be more efficient to access files in
512 byte chunks, thinking they bypassed RMS would now end up using RMS
to read 512 byte chunks from 4096byte blocks, but wouldn't they continue
to work ?