Are you sure you want to use FAT32?

I wrote a FAT32 File system under vxWorks. If the disks get real large, your performance stinks unless you have lots of memory to cache directories and the allocation bitmap.

My goal was to work well with 100,000 files, and this stressed the system. On my Linux system, there are well over 1,000,000 files and works well (Not using FAT32).

But, if you are dealing with relatively small disks and a few files, FAT32 is a simple file system. Performance goes up when the cluster size is large -- reducing the size of the allocation bitmap. If you can use FAT16, this is even easier and will be faster on a 8052.

Another issue you will run into is the need for chkdsk. This is a very complicated program and needs quite a bit of memory to validate and follow file allocation tables and directories. My system reserved some of the disk and did caching to the disk. This is a major strain on system resources.

If you are set on using a dos file system structure, I recommend you take a look at the Linux dos file system sources. All the Linux code is in 'C', and portions can be ported to your platform. I'd be surprised to see any 8052 specific code lying around.

Good luck,
<>< Lance.