joefritz@pawl18.pawl.rpi.edu (Jochen M. Fritz) (07/12/90)
Please note: this is not a flame against Borland International. I am very
inpressed with their products, *but* for some reason TD + DOS + HD = ~HD.
(In english: My hard disk sometimes gets trashed after I used Turbo Debugger.
The system:
Tandy 1000TX (286 with 8 bit slots)
MS-DOS 3.2.22 (a Tandy proprietary version)
a 32 Meg Hard Card
Seagate Controller
Miniscribe Drive (RLL)
From Megahaus (Designed for the system)
A (unused) serial card
A clock/calandar chip (Sits under ROM chip)
640K RAM + 128K video RAM. (RS calls it 768K) (I got the upgrade)
Enhanced Tandy CGA (On motherboard)
Mouse (serial, MS driver v6.1)
BIOS 01.00.03 (I think, from memory) (Pheonix & Tandy)
TSRs:
DOS (of course)
CED
Software installed @ time of failure:
All of DOS
CED
TC++
TASM
TD
TPROF
(Borland's little utilility programs for all of the above)
The problem:
C> TD (Works like it should)
C> TD (This time funny thing occur)
Upon TD's (second) boot, the screen fills up with pretty colors and
random characters. After the program starts up, the screen is normal,
and it runs without a problem.
C> TC (same funny things happen as above)
At this point, several times I got a message to this effect: Unable to
load swap file, or (when I tried to quit) cannot find c:\command.com.
I reboot my system. Once I got a boot error from the HD, once I didn't.
In either case, when I got my system up, I found a directory had been
*trashed* (In one case, it was the root, ouch). My theory: It seems that
DOS is using the screen (page 2) as a disk sector buffer. Why: I don't
know, but if someone has any advice, please help me. I will share my findings
if anyone is interested.
Possible solutions:
BIOS Upgrade (I don't know If I can)
DOS Upgrade (Standard DOS will work with my system)
Remove/ reconfigure some hardware
Just not use TD (Not If I can help it)
I did call up Borland this morning, and they had no reports of this problem.
TC++ is an excelent product, but it does push my system to the limit, and
thus my system couldn't take it.
Thanks a lot.
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| Jochen Fritz | For though we live in the world, we do not |
| joefritz@pawl.rpi.edu | wage war as the world does.-- 2 Cor. 10:3 |
| usergk2s@rpitsmts.bitnet| You have heard it said, Love your neighbor |
| Noah [the peace monger] | and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love |
| | your enemies. Matt. 5:43-44 |
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