teledisk problem

From: Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com>
Date: Fri Mar 14 18:26:01 2003

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Damien Cymbal wrote:

<snip>

> > >I'm running into a problem with a set of disks (original Visual 1050
> system
> > >disks) where when teledisk gets to cyl 80 it pops up an error box "Drive
> A: is
> > >not ready. Please correct and press any key to continue". Needless to
> say,
> > >nothing I've tried gets past this error. Teledisk usually seems fairly
> > >tolerant of most errors and will keep chugging, but not so in this case.
> I
> > >tried a few versions, the latest I have is 2.16, all behave the same.

> Sorry. Yes, I am trying to create the .TD0 image from a 5.25" floppy quad
> density (SSDD80/10). This is pure DOS (6.22) no Windows in site anywhere.
> Out of the 7 disks I've attempted, 3 of them have displayed this error. The
> help for teledisk says that this error is displayed when the drive door is
> open or the disk is not inserted (obviously not the case). I've tried
> unseasting/reseating the disk several times but once it gets into this state
> there seems to be no recovery. Like I say, I have seen cases where teledisk
> gets read errors during the .TD0 creation, but it usually will just report
> them in its status window and keep on chugging. Not so in this case. I've
> tried each of the suspect disks 3 times with the same results so I don't
> think it is my drive being flakey, but unfortunately it is the only PC 5.25
> I currently have running so I can't confirm that. As mentioned I have not
> had problems with other diskettes on this drive.
>
> A couple of things I have thought of trying just for informational purposes
> is (1) when teledisk reports the error, insert one of the successfully
> imaged disks into the drive just to see if it really is a track 80 specific
> issue with the disk or is teledisk has just gotten into some bad
> unrecoverable state somehow (2) try another disk copy on the real machine
> and if that succeeds without complaint try generating the .TD0 from the
> duplicated disk.

Trying (1) is worth doing, but I have the feeling that (2) is the
more likely to succeed, since it is apparently the disk that is
causing the problem. Witness the four that worked 'as advertised'.
I have experienced similar problems in the distant past, but for
the life of me cannot remember the outcome. I suspect that it was
more like (2) than (1) though.
                                                - don
Received on Fri Mar 14 2003 - 18:26:01 GMT