zz1he@sdcc19.ucsd.EDU (Heather Ebey) (07/28/88)
I am having a problem running Turbo C ver. 1.5 under PC-NFS 3.0a; tc, the Turbo C integrated environment does not recognize the remote drive, E:, which is on the server. Per Borland, Lee in Technical Services (408)438-5300, the ability to load source code from a remote drive was not written into TC. This makes it real difficult to use in a lab environment. We purchased a copy of Turbo C for each PC and loaded it on drive C:. Students are supposed to keep their homework assignments on drive E:. Drive E: is a remote drive on the server, which is the the particular user's private, password protected directory. The Turbo C integrated environment will recognize the remote drive, E:, but it will not load or save files to the remote drive. NFS shows a steady blip for about a minute (this means it is attempting to access something on the server) and then something (TC?) displays the message "Critical Error, Disk is not ready in drive E. Retry or Abort" Retry just repeats the same. Abort displays the message "Error: Invalit drive or directory. Press ESC." This problem exists even if I start tc from drive E:. One of the faculty was experimenting with all variations of this problem and crashed two harddisks. In view of this, I think I'll have to take tc out of the microlab. Too bad, it is such a nice learning environment. Has anyone seen this problem? Is there a solution? A patch? Heather Ebey UCSD, ACC MicroLab Manager -----------------INTERNET: hebey@ucsd.edu-------------------- Heather Ebey Voice: (619) 534-2448 UCSD, Academic Computing Center, C-010, La Jolla, CA. 92093 -----------------BITNET: hebey@ucsd.bitnet------------------
zz1he@sdcc19.ucsd.EDU (Heather Ebey) (07/30/88)
This is a continuation of the problem, with more details. I have Sperry PC/IT's running MS-DOS 3.1 and 3.2 with PC-NFS 3.0. connected to a NFS server on a Celerity. I tried tc from the remote drive E:, using the tc menu (Change directory, then Load and then tried just Load with the complete path e:\tmp\hello.c) and even "tc hello.c" from the directory where hello.c exists. Also, I loaded the entire Turbo C package to drive E: and tried it from there. It happily reads in any file that exists on drive C:, no matter where I start tc, and no matter where tc.exe lives, drive C: or drive E:. I've seen it display e:noname.c in the edit box, then give me the usual messages: "Critical Error, Disk is not ready in drive E. Retry or Abort" followed by, "Error: Invalid drive or directory. Press ESC." I press ESC, THEN IT LOADS THE FILE "E:NONAME.C", if it exists, and completely ignores the file which I requested. The same thing happens on four different Sperry's. Each has a different environment. Any ideas? --Heather -----------------INTERNET: hebey@ucsd.edu-------------------- Heather Ebey (ACC MicroLab Manager) Voice: (619) 534-2448 UCSD, Academic Computing Center, C-010, La Jolla, CA. 92093 -----------------BITNET: hebey@ucsd.bitnet------------------
madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) (07/31/88)
In article <212@sdcc19.ucsd.EDU> zz1he@sdcc19.ucsd.EDU (Heather Ebey) writes: |This is a continuation of the problem, with more details. |I have Sperry PC/IT's running MS-DOS 3.1 and 3.2 with PC-NFS 3.0. |connected to a NFS server on a Celerity. [problems with tc and PC-NFS] I don't have tc 1.5 to try on NFS, but I can outline some experiences about what kinds of software will and will not run with NFS and other LANs. Most networking systems support MS-DOS commands but not low-level disk accesses. NFS is one such system. Theoretically any program that does not attempt to use the low-level commands (eg int $13) will operate over NFS and most other networks. Programs such as Norton Utilities or the various disk optimizers will not work, and will probably give symptoms very much like what you describe, since the BIOS will not recognize the NFS disk and wouldn't know what to do with it if it did. Some LANs actually allow low-level disk access across a network. I don't think that this is a good idea. I would suggest two things. First, call Borland and ask them if they do direct disk reads or writes anywhere. They don't usually do silly things like that but that does improve speed so I can't be certain. If they do, you might suggest that they remove this; it's a big problem with LAN's. Second, try talking to Sun. They may know what is going on and may have a fix. jim frost madd@bu-it.bu.edu