> On Apr 9, 2025, at 6:14 AM, Michał Dec via Freedos-user > <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > I've counted that the two images of FreeDOS 1.4, live and bonus, amount to > 355567 sectors. This is still within the realm of possibility to fit it all > on one CD, as 80 minute CDs can hold 360k sectors. What influenced this > decision to make 2 CDs and not one when one? > > Best regards, > > Michał >
The original CD data capacity was 650Mb. Even though later on many manufacturers created disc that could store 700Mb of data, going beyond 650Mb really should be avoided for a couple reasons. The main reason is that early CD drives often had problems beyond reading 650Mb. The further beyond that amount of data, the more likely it is to encounter a problem. A good general rule for DOS era hardware is to stick to 650Mb or less per disc. There are other reasons as well. For instance: FreeDOS 1.3 would was a had two CDs. We stuck with that for now. It allows for a smaller main CD and permits a faster download if nothing on the BonusCD is desired. It also leaves room on the discs for the possible addition of other packages without needing us to change from a single disc back to multiple discs. However, there is a possibility we may be dropping many packages from future OS releases. The dropped packages would remain online in our download repository. They just would no longer be included with the release. If that was to occur, it could drastically reduce the size requirements. We would then likely put everything on a single disc. Jerome > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
