On 6/7/2011 3:58, Invisible wrote:
> Quite why Windows can't just write the final listing to the directory block
> and then write all the file data blocks sequentially is beyond me, but
> anyway...

Read up on how FAT works. It's not seeking back to write the directory 
listing. It's seeking back to read/write the FAT table.

Given modern memory sizes, it ought to be able to cache the FAT table, 
especially given that one might very reasonably be having only one process 
with files on the disk open to start with. But I suspect not a whole lot of 
time was put into optimizing that.

Blame UNIX.  The CP/M operators were much faster.  :-)

> Can you see why the inside might be a little dusty? Still, we only use this
> thing to run an old 16-bit Windows 3 program that controls some gear via a
> serial port. (Astonishingly, this works with Windows XP. Go figure...)

Didn't you just say that security updates can be done without breaking 
things? Yet here you are, amazed that a Win3 program runs under XP. ;-)

> Needless to say, I was extremely angry by the time I went home yesterday...

I need to learn how to not get frustrated by such things myself.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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