As always, I'm chopping and changing between lots of tasks... and as I've spent a lot of time on PhatHack Media Manager lately, I thought I'd spare some time for the DMS tools, as I haven't forgotten what people have been asking for as of late.
So, for the next version of the DMS tools we will have:
1) This funky message (or a re-worked version of it by release time)....
(http://phatnoise.us/Images/PhatHack/newTools.png)
If you've managed to read it carefully, and have used the DMS tools before - it should be fairly obvious what this is.
But for those still oblivious, I have finally gotten my head around a big bunch of C++ code (fat32format.c - only the second time ever I have managed to successfully do something in this language!) and now you have the option to perform Quick Format's using built-in code, rather than a full format using mkdosfs (a 3rd party tool).
I still need to prove this is a completely correct process with the operation of tha PhatBox as a result of the formatted DMS, but it formats my 250GB drive in about 10 seconds, as opposed to 'so-long-I-couldnt-be-bothered-to-time-it'.
2. Command line switch for supporting non-USB disk formatting. A simple 'manual' machanism for allowing disks attached via IDE cable to be formatted.
3. A fix to blank out the first 1MB of a disk, where the disk is identified as having had an Operating System installed prior to life as a DMS disk. This may or may not happen dependent on results from NS' DMS which I have safely in my hands to determine why a box wont boot from it. (@ns - Sorry it's taking so long!)
More news over the next week or so....!