Weird 3DO filesystem bug that had me headscratching!

Never copy a file in the CD that is longer than 32 characters (filename + extension). I did just that with some exported CEL files without renaming them to a shorter form first and code that was loading some shorter files that happened to come later in alphabetical order just failed to load. It's like the longer files had put a stop in whatever file loader was searching through the directory till it found the one file I requested to load. My code never touched the new long files I just copied naively in the same data folder inside the CD. It would only try to load a file that happens to come later alphabetically from the new files added.

To keep things short, I have a video displaying the issue. I don't even know if this bug was known or if there is something in the official documents describing the issue and suggesting you keep your filenames short.

At least 32 characters are much nicer than 8.3 in DOS :P


Comments

  1. Update: It seems that max 32 characters (or the docs say 31) is a known limitation of 3DO filesystem and the tool that is writing the CD folder back to ISO didn't have the sanity checks.

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