Moving BAM to a different track

From: Michał Pleban <lists_at_michau.name>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2017 11:29:57 +0100
Message-ID: <5A1FDDA5.6050405@michau.name>
Hello

Is it possible to move the BAM to a different place on the disk (I am
speaking specifically about 8050 and 8250 drives)? Looking at the disk
structure, it has first directory sector at 39,0, which then points to
38,0 (first sector of BAM), chained through 38,3, 38,6, 38,9 up to 38,1
(second directory sector). So the question is, does the drive actually
follow this chain (which would mean the BAM sectors could be placed
anywhere) or is their location hardcoded in the drive DOS and this chain
is just a leftover?

The rationale: my PC IMG to D80/D82 conversion tool reserves tracks 38
and 39 which contain the BAM and directory. The idea is that the user
can do DIRECTORY from Commodore BASIC and, more importantly, the PC
emulation layer files can be placed there.

But there are only 25 free sectors on track 38 in 8250 image, and the
software already uses 22 of them, leaving only 3 sectors free for the
software to grow. But if I moved the BAM to track 39 [*], I could gain
additional 4 sectors.

Regards,
Michau

[*] Yes, I am aware that if you were to place hundreds of files on the
disk, the growing directory could overwrite these BAM sectors.

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Received on 2017-11-30 11:00:02

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