8 Nov
2001
8 Nov
'01
12:30 a.m.
In a message dated 11/8/2001 6:34:09 AM Central Standard Time,
foo(a)siconic.com writes:
On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Allison wrote:
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
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