From: jfricker@vertexgroup.com (John F. Fricker)
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 03:47:43 +0800
To: Andy Brown <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: RE: What remains to be done.
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960709151241.0079c304@vertexgroup.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 09:32 AM 7/9/96 +0100, Andy Brown wrote:
>On 09 July 1996 02:04, John F. Fricker[SMTP:jfricker@vertexgroup.com] wrote:
>
>> One of these days Microsoft will officially release NT's IFS SDK. A few
>> "preliminary" and incomplete copies of a 1993 beta release do float around
>> but for a mere $50K there's a company that will sell you the complete source
>> for an IFS. It's a crime that Microsoft hasn't shipped this SDK yet as the
>> Installable File System is one of the great powers of NT.
>
>You can do this with the existing device driver kit since they supply the
>entire source code to the AT hard disk driver.  I took a look and decided
>that it would be too much work for me alone.  They also seem to suggest that
>you can write "filters" that extend the capability of existing drivers.
>
>> So, if someone is interested in coughing up the $50K I know a couple NT
>> programmers just chomping at the bit to build cool IFS's like PGPDrive, etc.
>
>I'm one of them, but this low level device driver stuff makes me shudder!
>
>
>- Andy
>
>

That's why the IFS SDK is so important. Writing device drivers is one thing
and nasty at that but the IFS is higher level and exactly what is needed to
create a PGPDrive that could exist on scsi, ide, tape, network drives,
floppies, cd-roms, etc. A device driver implementation would be married to a
particular controller type.



--j