UACE0@uhupvm1.BITNET.UUCP (03/02/87)
Received: by UHUPVM1 (Mailer X1.23b) id 7344; Sun, 01 Mar 87 22:10:47 CST Date: Sun, 01 Mar 87 21:59:38 CST From: "University (of Houston) ACE (UACE)" <UACE0@UHUPVM1> Subject: Interesting To: ST Users <INFO-ATARI16@score.stanford.EDU> Well, an interesting thing happened to my hard disk this weekend, I crashed the D partition while using michtron utilities to recover a file. I don't know if the latest version fixes this, but I was upset non-the-less to find out that recovering a file would crash the partition. As it turns out, only the first sector was damaged, so a simple read rwabs from drive E (which had the same size) to write rwabs on drive D fixed it. However, some of the top level files were screwed up, and some of the files in the directory I was trying to recover from were screwed up. But I was able to get drive D back online and save what I could before zeroing it out. SOOOO... If you have a bad partition, or get a bad partition on your hard disk, try writing a little program which does a read RWABS from boot sector zero from a partition of the same size and writing it to the boot sector of the bad partition. If this doesn't work, try one more sector, and keep trying one more sector, for a few. Chances are you will be able to recover some of the STuff. I will post a program which will do this, soon (like this week). - Mike Vederman
dyer@atari.UUCP (03/03/87)
> If you have a bad partition, or get a bad partition on your hard disk, try > writing a little program which does a read RWABS from boot sector zero from a > partition of the same size and writing it to the boot sector of the bad > partition. If this doesn't work, try one more sector, and keep trying one > more sector, for a few. Chances are you will be able to recover some of the > STuff. I will post a program which will do this, soon (like this week). Logical sector zero (in a partition) contains a standard floppy-like prototype-BPB with only the fields BPS, SPC, RES, NDIRS, NSECTS and SPF valid (see your Guide, "Boot Sectors", pp 58-60 in my edition): BPS = 512 SPC = 2 RES = 1 NDIRS = 256+ NSECTS = #sectors in partition SPF = (((NSECTS/2)+2)/256)+1 NDIRS is nondeterministic, but is >=256. Word values (like SPF) are stored in 8086 format. 16 bit FATs are always used. The Rwabs() trick mentioned above should work unless the FATs and root directories have been clobbered. I supposed you could back them up to floppy before you ran that Michtron utility.... -- -Landon Dyer, Atari Corp. {sun,lll-lcc,imagen}!atari!dyer The views expressed here do not not necessarily reflect those of Atari Corp. Segments are for worms.
jmg@cernvax.UUCP (03/06/87)
In article <575@atari.UUCP> dyer@atari.UUCP (Landon Dyer) writes: > >Logical sector zero (in a partition) contains a standard floppy-like >prototype-BPB with only the fields BPS, SPC, RES, NDIRS, NSECTS and >SPF valid (see your Guide, "Boot Sectors", pp 58-60 in my edition): What guide? Where can I buy it?
leavens@atari.UUCP (Alex Leavens) (03/09/87)
in article <448@cernvax.UUCP>, jmg@cernvax.UUCP (jmg) says: > >>SPF valid (see your Guide, "Boot Sectors", pp 58-60 in my edition): > > What guide? Where can I buy it? The HitchHiker's Guide to the BIOS, which is part of the Developer's Kit. You buy the Developer's Kit from us. Contact Cindy Clavern at Atari. --alex @ Atari BIX: alexl. GEnie: ALEXLEAVENS AtariCorp: 408-745-2006
jmg@cernvax.UUCP (03/12/87)
In article <621@atari.UUCP> leavens@atari.UUCP (Alex Leavens) writes: > The HitchHiker's Guide to the BIOS, which is part of the Developer's >Kit. You buy the Developer's Kit from us. Contact Cindy Clavern at >Atari. I don't want the bl--dy developers kit. I want proper technical documentation from Atari. Quote from the editorial of a UK computing journal (serious):- Another worrying sign is a survey of 2000 xxxx users carried out by Marplan for xxxx, which showed that while they were more satisfied with their suppliers in 1986 than in the previous year, they are still far from happy with the quality of its documentation. Documentation is not glamorous, nor is it a big moneyspinner for manufacturers. But to the user it is all-important. If suppliers want to sell more machines to a user base that has eaten its fill of glamour and jargon, they will have to start to concentrate on improving services like documentation and maintenance.