Apple III & Profile - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

12 Aug 1998

At 11:56 AM 8/12/98 -0700, Sam Ismail wrote:
...

I'll just say this: Apple UCSD Pascal blows.

As you mentioned, if you put the wrong disk in, it does not give you a way
to recover.  I know its hard to believe any software could be worse than
Windows at error recovery, but Apple Pascal was.  I once lost my entire
disk of Pascal programs because the OS could not find the right disk.  The
error message was something like "Volume not found: directory erased". 
UCSD Pascal's directory structure is absolutely elementary.
It's FAT has room for a fixed number of files, and each is stored
contiguously in logical blocks.  If you've still got the disk, 
you can easily recover your files.  I'm not sure why it 
would decide to zap the directory structure - are you sure it 
wasn't your fault?  :-)  There's a volume label, and I thought
the OS at least checked this before it assumed the right disk
was in the drive - unless your program was working at a low
level, and asked for a specific (#4:, #5:) drive.

- John