VBRANDT@DBNUAMA1.BITNET (06/26/89)
Hello all,
A little story: Here I was, finally sitting down to make a fresh backup of
my HD. Due to various mishaps (hard disk crashes and user errors :-), my last
backup was done in January.
So I formatted a pile of disks using my favorite formatter, DCFormat. Then
I ran Turtle (my favorite backer-upper), watched it install the RAM disk, saw
the first few files being sucked into drive M:, and then ...
... Turtle REFUSED the newly formatted disk!!!!
What had happened?? Well, I use 82 track 10 sector 'twister' disks. Turtle
provides a self-adjusting RAM disk, so it used to work fine. BUT: The current
DCFormat creates disks with 3 sectors per FAT, whereas the Turtle RAM disk only
works with 5 sectors/track! So watch out, and don't get trapped like me.
Of course I had long thrown away all earlier versions of DCFormat, and I do
like 3 sector FATs better (after all, it's an extra 2k per disk).
Now the real purpose of this mailing: George, if you read this, have you
dealt with that problem. If not, are you going to? :-) There's at least one
Turtle fan waiting (namely me :-).
&Sorry for not writing George Woodside directly, but I had tried unsuccessfully
a few months back, and I didn't feel like trying again, considering the bad
luck I've had with email these past weeks :-(a
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Bitnet: VBRANDT@DBNUAMA1 (will go away late '89) Volker A. Brandt
UNM409@DBNRHRZ1 (soon) Angewandte Mathematik
UUCP: ...!unido!DBNUAMA1.bitnet!vbrandt (Bonn, West Germany)
ARPAnet: VBRANDT%DBNUAMA1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDUwoodside@ttidca.TTI.COM (George Woodside) (06/29/89)
In article <8906261014.AA28016@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> VBRANDT@DBNUAMA1.BITNET writes: ...[edited] > What had happened?? Well, I use 82 track 10 sector 'twister' disks. Turtle >provides a self-adjusting RAM disk, so it used to work fine. BUT: The current >DCFormat creates disks with 3 sectors per FAT, whereas the Turtle RAM disk >only works with 5 sectors/track! So watch out, and don't get trapped like me. > > Of course I had long thrown away all earlier versions of DCFormat, and I do >like 3 sector FATs better (after all, it's an extra 2k per disk). > > Now the real purpose of this mailing: George, if you read this, have you >dealt with that problem. If not, are you going to? :-) There's at least one >Turtle fan waiting (namely me :-). Wonderful. I needed a few new headaches. Updating Turtle's archive handling to be compatible with both the current TOS (1.2, backwards and somewhat unreliable archive bit) and the new TOS 1.4 (normal, and apparently reliable archive bit) is on my task list. Changing a disk configuration on the fly is a bit more of a problem. Turtle writes the disk image in the RAMdisk, then expects the floppy to match it. Changing the configuration after the RAMdisk is filled is not possible (well, not practical). The only other options are to scan the output floppy disks before writing to the RAMdisk (which is very contrary to the way the program works now), or add yet another setup option. I'll have to kick this around a bit. I'm a bit on the busy side at the moment (so what's new?), so it will be a while before I can get time to act on the issue. -- *George R. Woodside - Citicorp/TTI - Santa Monica, CA *Path: ..!{philabs|csun|psivax}!ttidca!woodside