Chris_F_Chiesa@cup.portal.com (04/10/89)
I picked up the program, posted here a few weeks ago, for the IBM-PC to write disks in "double-density MYDOS format," and after transferring it to three different computers in two states (NOT counting Portal in a THIRD state) I finally got to try it last night on a real, true, honest-to-IBM PC-AT! Unfortunately, it didn't work very well: designating the program as "TOATARI," typing the program-name alone sufficed to invoke it and produce a help screen, where I found that the command TOATARI /I A: should format, or /I)nitialize, the disk in drive A: The command TOATARI /L A: should list the directory of the disk in drive A:, and TOATARI /W filename[,...] A: should write files to the disk... all of this being in MYDOS format, supposedly I started with the "initialize" command above, and got an error immediately: "Error formatting track 0." I tried the SAME command a SECOND time, and got NO errors. Next I tried to write some files onto this newly-initialized disk, and got another error: "unable to read directory for update" on the disk! In order to further investigate THAT, I tried the "list directory" command format, and got the same sort of error: "Directory unreadable" or whatever the wording was; you get the gist of it. I thought, perhaps the pre-existing IBM tracks etc. on the disk I had used, were interfering with operations, so I took the disk and ran it through a magnetic bulk-eraser, returning it to its off-the-shelf state. No dice; SAME sequence of errors, including the on-again, off-again formatting error. I tried the whole thing over again with a completely different disk, and got all the same errors. NOTHING worked. Now, the 64-dollar question: can anyone suggest what may be going wrong?? Am I doing something wrong, am I using the wrong computer, or has the whole thing been a big put-on from the beginning? Has anyone else gotten this to work? I was "iffy" on trying this in the first place, but now that I WANT to use it, it doesn't work. Maybe it's just theUniverse's idea of poetic justice! Thanks in advance for all help!