Re: write alignment matters?

[Paul Koning <paul_koning%dell.com@localhost>]

On Jun 27, 2011, at 1:55 PM, David Holland wrote:

> ...
> 
>> It took the invention of that paragon of OS's - DOS - to teach
>> the populace that simply pulling the device/media was an acceptable
>> operating procedure.
> 
> That's hardly fair. Until the Mac appeared in 1984 every small
> computer that had a floppy drive had a floppy drive you could
> open/eject arbitrarily, and none of them required explicit unmount.
> This was true of at least some bigger systems as well; as I recall
> RT-11 did not require explictly unmounting floppies before changing
> them.

Sure it is fair.  The fact that some operating systems had extremely 
simple/primitive file systems without any caching means that those systems were 
capable of surviving file device pulls.  But it isn't reasonable to consider 
that a feature.  RT-11 was in fact an unusual example in its days; few if any 
operating systems of that era had a "just yank it" property.  

        paul