In a message dated 11/8/2001 6:34:09 AM Central Standard Time,
foo_at_siconic.com writes:
> On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Allison wrote:
>
> > 1- Drives (SA400 was pure garbage!!!)
> > 2- horribly botched controllers (TRS-80 without mods)
> > 3- software such as disk drivers that would hang if no media or
> errors
> > 4- floppy drives/controlers that would "bite" the media on power up
> or
> > down meaning it would write trash due to no write locks.
> > 5- not enough space
> >
> > The apple-II was plagued with #1 and somewhat with #3 depending on
> > OS and definately #4. Space was a problem for many users(#5)
>
> Most software I used on the Apple ][ would not hang on a disk error. I
> only experienced that problem with certain games that had no provision for
> disk errors. Only very poorly written software would not recover properly
> from disk errors, but this is a bad software design issue, and not a
> hardware issue.
>
> As for having media in the drive upon power up, I learned early on from my
> cousin not to leave disks engaged in the drive at power up. In the very
> least I always opened the drive door before turning the machine on. Even
> if I was lazy, I rarely got bit by that issue.
>
> Sellam Ismail
Agreed, most games and programs I ran (which were copies of copies of
copies...) usually could recover from wrong disk, or I/O errors. Even the
type in programs from NIBBLE magazine had error handling routines.
I don't personally remember having a disk failure from powering up with a
disk in the drive. Heck, I remember taking disks out while the disk access
light was on! Perhaps I was luckier than most?
clearing the HYPE about bioterrorism
www.formatc.org/terrorism.htm
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Received on Thu Nov 08 2001 - 08:30:50 GMT