CompuServe Messages

I'd be surprised if MSCDEX actually supported the 20-char filenames possible in ISO-9660. DOS certainly doesn't understand anything but 8.3,and it gets very confused when you insert a CD with longer filenames. So access to longer filenames might be possible at some lower level, from within programs that understood – but that would be tough to do, and a lot of re-inventing the wheel. ISO-9660 can supposedly implement the Mac's data/resource fork dichotomy using some special bits that mark that a file has an auxilliary file. This would let you make a true ISO-9660 disc that brought up proper icons and executables and data/resource files on a Mac. I've seen discs like this. They weren't mixed mode (a disc with both ISO and Mac HFS images). There's a lot of tricks like this. I'm still over my head, and over most people's head, when I ask about whether a given mastering program can handle certain features. For example, I want to make a differently-mixed ISO disc – long filenames for Amigoids in some sub-directories with mixed upper- lower-case filenames, which are actually in violation of the ISO spec, where filenames must be upper-case. The Mac handles upper/lower filenames on ISO discs just fine, though. I need longer names and mixed-case names to properly represent Sculpt .scene files. Sculpt's requester only shows *.scene files. No foo.SCENE allowed, either. Duh. I'm worried that a PC-base pre-mastering system won't be able to un-archive a 'tar' tape of my disk image made on my Amiga. If the filenames come off the tar tape with longer names, how does the premastering software fold the filenames behind DOS's back? Now, I've seen P.D. hacks for DOS that lengthen the filenames, but that seems so risky to me… 🙂