🚀 go-pugleaf

Great... this thread is SO Tandy / Radio Shack Color Computer related :-)

You know what has worked for my CoCo setup to avoid the disk drive head bang 
bug after everytime I load an ML program?. There are some software based 
elegant solutions but that means I would have either to patch the Disk ROM 
or always load some utility before a session with the CoCo. I found that if 
right after loading an ML program - something that seems always to mess up 
the head location "index" in the disk system - one only has to immediately 
do a DIR, wait to the drive activity light to go off and then proceed to 
EXEC without having to worry about the drive head mechanism banging against 
its stops upon the next CoCo re-start.

Of course this only works if the ML program/routine you're loading does not 
autostart... if it does then expect a nice clacketyclack from the disk drive 
when restarting the CoCo and accesing the disk drive :-)

A side effect of not waiting for the drive activity to go off and launch the 
ML program right after the DIR listing, is that once the ML program is 
running (which has been usually a game in my case), the drive will keep on 
spinning all the while. This is due to the delay the disk system has set to 
allow the drive to spin for a couple of seconds more after accesing it. Not 
much harm here but it is a bit annoying to corner-eye watch that little red 
light lit while playing a furious session with Thexder.

This tip brought you by and sponsored by the CoCo-alition to bring sanity 
and nice and healthy discussions about the CoCo in this newsgroup. Thanks 
for the bandwidth! ;-)


-=[ Rogelio ]=-