knudsen@ihwpt.UUCP (mike knudsen) (06/25/86)
I have been having some troubles with a Disto Ram Disk pak that I got at the Chicago Rainbowfest. (1) You can format it with the orginal RS OS-9 "format", but not with the "Sformat" that comes with SDisk. Both go thru the motions of formatting (it's fun to see how fast those tracks count up on the screen), but only after a "format" job can you *write* files onto the ramdisk. Funny thing is, after an "sformat" you can do a "free" or "dir" and it looks fine. Just don't write onto it! (2) Modifying the device descriptor (to change # of tracks or sides) seems to invalidate everything -- you can't even format anymore (sformat gives error msg, format quietly does nothing and returns to OS9). Yes, I used "verify u" to fix the CRC. That device descriptor is 35-track, SS. When I took it back to the Fest and complained, Tony DiStefano (its designer) found a 40-track descriptor in the library directory (full of those awful 2.0 names) and made it work. However, I'd like to know why you can't customize the descriptors yourself. Especially after that Rainbow article a couple months ago about making special formats on the Disto (eg, 28-track DS or 56-track SS). Anybody out there had any luck with this little box? I'm ready to piggyback it up to 512 K, but not till the software issues are ironed out. Thanks, mike k. PS: I'm running OS9 1.01 still. The benefits of 2.0 don't seem to justify the grief required.