PS2 FAT32 in APA space

[Berion]

I was just curious if uLE would read FAT32 just like for "mass:/" but unfortunately no.

The reasons behind it? Well, since FAT32 is much worst than PFS and we have PFS Shell across Windows and Linux, no reason. Just for fun and test @pink1 APA Partition Header Checksumer. ^^"

At least I proved to myself that this is possible. FS space is 124MiB (4MiB reserved for APA "header"). If someone want to play with it, I attached raw disk image.

How to mount it on Linux without apascan (ancient, not working on current distros)? For image below:

losetup loop1 --offset 2151677952 --sizelimit 130023424 /dev/sdx
mount /dev/loop1 /home/mint/ps2/test

- - -
This is also for me milestone to experiments on hybrid HDD creation (APA/GPT >> PFS+FAT32). Which I believe is possible to forge.

Does such changes in uLE src is hard/time consuming to add? Just curious because this would be something which allow two different environments to read the same partition.
@krHACKen @uyjulian

 

[TnA]

Interesting!

"Hybrid-Disc" is probably not 100% possible, but the FS-support can be takes from somewhere else.
A native APA-Driver for Linux and Windows would be awesome, because some filesystems might be directly accessible, when the "positions" can be allocated (especially automatically, for "Noob-friendliness").

 

[Berion]

I forgot to mention how I made it in the first place:

1. Create partition in uLE with PFS (because it is a lot easier than creating APA "header" from scratch later).
2. Read the LBA start address and calculate size.
   
3. Attach it as loop device on Linux from specified sector range and format to chosen file system (i.e via "mkfs.vfat").
   
4. In hex editor change file system ID (For PFS is 0001h). For FAT32 I choose my custom id: FA32h and correct the APA checksum (first four bytes for partition) via @pink1 app (it is enough to just drag and drop whole partition image to application and it prints checksum).

@TnA Such driver would be very nice. On Linux something like this is already available but was stop working since kernel v3 line. :/ However, FAT32 is junk. Would be awesome to replace it by exFAT module (especially that this fs is no longer closed and MS have published full specification and changed licensing). Then this would be interesting. Imagine how convenient would be exFAT on APA with APA drivers for Windows! No longer wasting space for raw partitions (128MiB rounding). No longer special apps (HDL Dumb/WinHIIP) for putting there games etc. But... let's face the reality, no one will write it.