>"I also had to decide how much 'cluster slack' would be too much, and that wound up constraining the format size of a FAT volume to 32GB."
NT4 didn't support FAT32, and NT4 actually was actually able to be 4GB rather than 2GB for a FAT volume because NT4 allowed 64K clusters, so actually exceeded what most systems were able to do at the time. Formatting as FAT in NT4 had no cluster check or option. The cluster size used was decided based on the size of the volume.
Furthermore, the The 32GB limitation for FAT32 volumes was originally in the internal format functions, not the dialog itself. On Windows 2000 (Which does support FAT32) you can try to format a drive bigger than 32GB as FAT32, but the formatting will fail, as it is hard-coded at the end of the format to fail trying to format FAT32 volumes larger than 32GB. The dialog itself isn't what presents this limitation and it is shared by the command line format.com which uses the same functions.
Not sure why he seems to always exaggerate his own involvement. He's got people believing that he wrote the Zip folder code that Microsoft literally licensed from Info-Zip because he had to touch it to get it integrated. I guess exaggeration is what "influencers" do, and that's what he is at least trying to be now.
I don't know if FAT32 was in development in late 1994, it's possible, but it sure didn't ship in Windows NT 4, nor the original Windows 95. Even when it did land in Windows 95 OSR2, the format command happily accepted partitions up to 128GiB; but okay, Windows 95 isn't NT.
Windows 2000's internal formatting functions appear to be the real reason FAT32 is limited to 32GiB on new formats. The GUI, format command, and diskpart are all equally incapable of creating a >32GiB file system. Why? Who knows, it's not like drives of that size or larger didn't already exist at the time. If you use, say, mkdosfs on Linux, the VFAT driver in Windows 2000+ will take volumes up to 2TiB, you can even install Windows 2000 on such large volumes.
Win95osr2 could format FAT32 volumes up to at least 128GiB IIRC, the 32GiB came when the filesystem was officially added to the NT line in Windows 2000⁰.
Part of the reason, I always assumed, was to push people to use NTFS where they otherwise wouldn't, which gave MS a bit of lock-in because NTFS wasn't particularly stable on Linux at the time. ExFat as a compromise didn't exist until a fair while later either.
> If you use, say, mkdosfs on Linux, the VFAT driver in Windows 2000+ will take volumes up to 2TiB
2TiB is only the limit if you stick to 512 byte blocks, the filesystem supports up to 4096 byte blocks giving 16TiB. Some filesystem tools didn't like this, and the larger cluster sizes could be very wasteful of space for small files³, so it was often avoided. I don't know if the Linux tools supported this from the start, but they certainly did eventually.
--
[0] there was at least one common 3rd a party driver, from sysinternals to support it on NT4
[1] for safety the most common methods for using NTFS under Linux defaulted to read-only, then and for some time after
[2] sometimes to the extent of causing corruption rather than just refusing to work
[3] the main reason to use FAT32 over FAT16 at the time⁴ being that above 32MiB the cluster size needed to increase about the minimum 512B, up to 32KiB for 2GiB filesystems⁵ meaning an average of 16KiB wasted per file.
[4] later the 2GiB limit⁵ was more significant as drive sizes grew
[5] 4GiB was possible with 64KiB blocks though while officially supported by the format this was not supported by all tools
Aye, I'm aware, but a 16TiB FAT32 file system in that configuration is only usable on Linux, at which point... why? Use exFAT in that range!
Windows NT 5.x's storage drivers don't support hard disks larger than 2TiB, and there's nothing to do about that. It puts the upper limit of FAT32 on those systems at 2TiB.
Well, it was a game from 1995 and wouldn't fit in with Vista's style revamp. Even the old Minesweeper and Solitaire games became Direct3D accelerated in Vista. Maybe the effort to do the same overhaul to Pinball was discarded, but the idea that a 64-bit native build couldn't get working is absurd when the previous Windows version included the very thing.
I still have nightmares about that code. :)
https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kfpjhg/i_am_dave_plum...
21 days ago | 121 comments
Where did the covette come from then? https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/dev-shows-off-...
Source: Extracted VZIP150's InstallShield `data.z`, saw `DZIP32.DLL`, and `DUNZIP32.DLL`, and confirmed with `strings` on `Vzip.dll`.
http://dynazip.com/ confirms “DynaZip technology is used by Microsoft Corp. and for many years it has been directly incorporated into the Desktop and Server versions of the Windows Operating Systems. DynaZip technology implements the compression engine behind the Windows Zip Folder user interface which allows users to view, extract-from and create ZIP files that are managed as compressed folders.”
https://web.archive.org/web/19961130210204/http://www.innerm... Version 3
https://web.archive.org/web/20000226025901/http://www.dynazi... Version 4
That code still seemed to be around in (some versions of) XP: https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b...
As for the ZIP support, I can't find the source code for ZIP folders specifically. There's this excerpt from another company (Schlumberger Technology Corp.): https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b... which was added in 1996 if the comments are to be believed.
That was a dry Monday, not a rainy Thursday. It's possible he wrote the code Thursday, but didn't get to check it in until Sunday (though Thursday was dry too), but I know I couldn't tell you the what the weather was for code I wrote last month.
Not that I am discounting your claim, but from a cursory glance through your comment history you're practically a nobody with a seeming vendetta against someone who credibly had a part in much of Windows NT's innards.
The 32GB limit for FAT32 doesn't appear to be handled by the shell code or the dialog, so when I said it was handled internally to the formatting code, I couldn't actually find that. It's just somewhere loweer than the UI. What I did do howeever was boot up Windows 2000, the first version that did have FAT32, and there's no limitation in the format dialog itself. It goes through the entire process and then gives a "Volume too big" error after it has gone through the process, an error shared by not just the format dialog, but diskpart, disk management, and format, which certainly suggests that that is happening at some lower level. The dialog in question does just call into other functions to perform the actual format, but I wasn't able to find the actual source files for it.
>Dave for his part provided his credentials.
Now he understandably does leave out a bit of info about his history which you could arguably say is part of my "vendetta" that you observed. The reason for the proportion of comments is less a vendetta and more that I get kind of worked up every time stuff of his is posted and people applaud how great he is. He's no Dave Cutler but he certainly talks like he was.
Now, as to the tidbit. Dave Plummer ran a scam company that was sued by Washington State in 2006, "SoftwareOnline.com, Inc. ". He actually left Microsoft specifically to run this company. Court documents can be seen here:
https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s...
You can find David W. Plummer listed in the court complaint.
The short of it is that it was an online software scam company that tricked people into downloading fake Anti-virus and security software using online ads, and then the software delivered additional adware and nagware onto users machines.
That is why it may appear I have a vendetta. I don't trust a word he says and especially when what he says directly contradicts other sources. Mistakes in memory are one thing, but some of them are rather beyond the sort of thing I think is reasonable. Paired with his history, I'm convinced he's actually lying intentionally because he's trying to build a "following" and "Dave's Garage" is just his latest scam. That's why he keeps "coming forward" in posts and his youtube as writing this or doing that. What bothers me is that it's working, because most people don't seem to even question it, even where there are rather severe contradictions.
To give benefit of the doubt, though, Dave didn't say he wrote that logic into the interface. Just that he had to "decide on the cluster slack", which clearly was written by someone (which could be him, this wasn't specified) at a deeper level of the operating system. It's also worth noting that Dave's interface doesn't even give the option to format with FAT32 in the first place, at least with my 128GB USB stick.
So I find nothing wrong with his statement. He wrote the interface, a temporary one which ended up being permanent. He also played the role (or at least a role) in deciding the arbitrary 32GB FAT32 volume size limit.
As for SoftwareOnline.com, that's also mentioned on Dave's Wikipedia article so it's not something hidden away. Anyone so inclined to research his character will see it.
With regards to your vendetta against him regarding his past conduct, it is unwarranted: He settled with Washington state and paid penalties, he returned refunds as requested; the case is closed. If you're going to keep bothering him over that, it's you who is wrong.
The link describes the judgement against the company he was CTO of at the time. So, he's been through the justice system for this, and has been reprimanded satisfactorily. He's paid the fines and made the promises and does not appear to have reoffended.
I don't think there's anything else for him to do in order to atone for this.
So, why are you still mad? What would it take for you to let go of this vendetta that you say you have?
I don't care either way, I'm not involved. I'm just curious why people will forgive some for just about anything but hold negative attitudes toward others for their entire lives, no matter what they do.
The second google result is a copy that Microsoft are hosting on their own website: https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0
(I'm not going to do it because I'm drunk and I probably have better things to do than illicitly look through Microsoft source code.)
I downloaded it only to search for swear words. The most offensive thing I've ever found was things like "workaround because some idiots call <API name> <description of a wrong way to do it>"
Regardless of the rest of your story, this made me chuckle a bit - since Dave went from signing off his YouTube video’s from “I’m only here for likes and subs” to “I’m mostly here for the likes and subs” and started accepting sponsored products.
https://www.wired.com/2015/08/fully-immersive-mind-oliver-sa...
depending on the words you choose to describe the memory, and how much you talk about it, you can dramatically change what you think you saw or heard or experienced, to the point where you're telling something that is based on memory, but is now effectively 100% fiction.
human memory is very, very flawed.
Bird in the hand, worse is better, etc.
I have no idea where I heard that, but I use it often at work to ensure we don't ship temporary solutions but do it right the first time.
> I use it often at work to ensure we ... do it right the first time.
If it works, you did it right!
At any given time, there should be one code path to render an abstract UI definition to a screen. It might depend on screen capabilities or running environment or size, but it should be one, so you don't need to maintain and ship ancient unmaintained software.
Interestingly I think this generalises to the whole Windows Explorer.
The Explorer introduced in Win95 and later in NT 4 is a lovely bit of UI design. It introduced the Taskbar (never seen before, and no, the NeXT Dock is not a taskbar, and Acorn's Paul Fellows said NeXT's implementation was apparently derived from the Icon Bar in Acorn RISC OS -- NeXT hired an Acorn developer and he took his Archimedes with him to California). It introduced the Start Menu, with an elegant system of folders and shortcuts as its storage model, later imitated with the newly-customisable Apple Menu of MacOS 8 and later.
But in Win98, Microsoft bodged the Explorer with Active Desktop, which renders via Internet Explorer 4, so that MS could justify bundling IE4 with Windows to the US DOJ in court. That version is multithreaded, which is good, but it's also much bigger and much slower... because it renders via IE. That means new slowdowns and new ugliness, like windows of generic icons, which then get replaced with the correct icons as the renderer tries to catch up. So, they hid that, with an empty window and a flashlight scanning, while the HTML renderer tries to create a view of the Control Panel. It also added wallpapers in folder views, a horribly ugly idea.
And _that_ ugly version is what KDE ended up copying, rather than the cleaner quicker one that was first launched.
And KDE didn't notice and copy the nice neat and Unix-like "just display a Start Menu built from the contents of a directory" idea. It implemented a database instead, and so every successive start menu implementation copies that instead.
The ugly hack done for some other, non-technical reason ends up being the one that influences the successor designs, and the classic clean original implementation is forgotten.
In this case, the results are GNOME 2, MATE, KDE, Cinnamon, LXDE/LXQt, even much of Xfce...
> He created the Task Manager for Windows, the Space Cadet Pinball ports to Windows NT, Zip file support for Windows, HyperCache[4] for the Amiga and many other software products. He has been issued six patents in the software engineering space.
If the softwareonline.com part doesn't convince you I don't know what does.
I do this all the time for SD cards. (Because who wants exfat?)
> ...
> It wasn't elegant, but it would do until the elegant UI arrived.
This doesn't follow IMO. It presents all the options you need in a simple interface; what would go into a more "elegant" interface?
If this were the 90s and everyone was still using floppy disks, yeah it would be worth making it slightly more user-friendly.
I actually quite like the new UI as far as the replacement of the format dialog but the portions that replace the Disk Manager functionality are a bit lacking because it doesn't have the graphical representation of the disk layouts.
Default view: https://i.imgur.com/56yZ8gZ.png
Advanced view section: https://i.imgur.com/fKb3R8c.png
Formatting an existing partition: https://i.imgur.com/DmbX3FQ.png
It's not perfect but it does largely retain the same layout while matching with the OS theme and adds a few options that used to be multi paged wizards in the disk manager. Minor things like "format" is a bit more direct than "start" and "cancel" a bit more apt than "close" sneak in as well. I'm sure it being 33% wider will be the end of the world to someone though.
One thing I think I'm a bit split on is it still expects you to enter new partition sizes in MB. It does at least add localized number separators but it seems a bit silly to worry about how many millions of megabytes given the numbers will only grow with time for here.
Not only still there but inspired others, like the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool that I always used to bypass the 32GB FAT32 limit: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/hp_usb_disk_storage...
I usually try to calm myself that we can't do everything perfectly all the time, and we should prioritize the most important things, and let some less-important things slide.
I hate Salesforce for tech work and support tickets. It is the worst experience possible. Remedy was Remedy and it was obscure and weird and hard to use at times.
But I swear to god Salesforce is going to cost me my job becuase it makes it impossible to do my job well. Why can't I just open one ticket in one browser tab without 15 other tickets popping into a second tab bar? Why does it NEEEEEED to hide whatever other tab I was working on in a drop down, why can't I sort, filter, rearrange, or resize anything? IT'S BRAIN BREAKING.
Anyway thanks for reading this rant. The idea of running any sort of query or script in Remedy sounds like water in the desert to me now. I'd settle for using service-now to track things. Anything but Salesforce dammit.
A bad solution can also stick, if it's the only one available / viable for some time, and then everything else has to be backwards-compatible to it.
It's a bit frustrating to see that large parts of a very popular OS (used in life-critical applications) are abandoned like that.
There is nothing more temporary than the permanent.
At least that's what the Russians say.
Here's his YT channel for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/@DavesGarage
