CompuServe Messages

John, Reading the raw data is a function of the drive based on instructions given by the driver and the design of the hardware. Getting that data from the drive into your program is a function of the driver. Doing something useful with that data is a function of the software you're running at the time that is asking for the data. Consider the example of programs that allow the Amiga to read-write MS-DOS disks. First of all, the disk drive (hardware) has to be compatible with the MS-DOS disk. Standard Amiga drives won't read/write a 1.44 Meg MS-DOS floppy no matter what you do. Next, the driver has to understand the layout of MS-DOS disk and be able to "instruct" the disk drive to read that data and "separate the wheat from the chaff" so to speak. Finally, the software that's is calling the driver and telling it to go get the data has to know what to do with it once you have it. Of course, once you have all that…you still may end up with junk. Say you read off the file "command.com" from an MS-DOS disk. You've got the file, but won't be able to do much with it since it's Intel code, not Motorola code thus of very little value on an Amiga. Thus, to use one of those MS-DOS CD-ROM's, you'd have to have a drive that was compatible with the disk layout (be able to physically read the data from the CD-ROM disk), then a driver that allowed the Amiga to 'talk' to that drive and be able to separate out the data from the sector header information and software that understood what the data meant. That is…which was index, which was text and how to get from one to the other…and of course…how to convert that data into a screen display. Make sense? Don