🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct28.131322.1@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> phys169@csc.canterbury.ac.nz writes:

>there is one. The only problems I've had have been traced back to faulty
>hardware (sometimes this is darned hard to find - things like Norton's DT
>aren't good enough, but Jim Braking's HDDIAG spotted the intermittent problem).
>
>I think the problem might be that the disk has more than 1024 cylinders, in
>which case you can get a wrap-around with any software if you fill up the disk
>unless you have the proper software loaded first. And of course that isn't
>SuperStore's fault. The only problem might be in realising the special driver,
>if it needs to be loaded every time, would go at the start of DCONFIG.SYS, not
>CONFIG.SYS, just as DMDRVR.BIN has to go first.
>
>Mark Aitchison, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Mark

I've been using Superstor for the last year without any problems (at
all) and was beginning to believe that the disk filling up was, as a
previous poster said, an urban legend.  However recently, a repeatable
failure has occurred with my system.  Here's the scenario:

HARDWARE:
   HP Vectra 8MHz AT (real old), DRDOS 6 with latest revisions installed
   30MB 5ms HDD, partitioned as
        D: is 3MB uncompressed,
        C: is remaining 28MB superstored (gives about 46MB)
        (this is an old MFM drive that came the the PC. ie. <1024cyl)

It's been running fine for a year without ANY NOTICABLE DIFFERENCE between
C: and D:.

THE PROBLEM
===========
To install (on C:) the children's game "The Treehouse" which has it's
own INSTALL program.  It needs (supposedly) about 3MB.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATTEMPT #1
I have about 3MB left on C: so I started INSTALL - it failed at the end.

RESULT #1
A "DIR" shows "0 bytes left" as expected - I thought there might be
insufficient room, so I deleted some files, one of which was 97K long.
AFTER DELETING THE FILES, the files were gone but there was STILL "0
BYTES LEFT".  DRDOS's chkdsk did not detect any errors and neither did
PCTools #7 of DISKFIX.  Where did the 97K file (and it's space go?)

* THIS SYMPTOM (files gone & still "0 bytes left") IS CONSISTENT & REPEATABLE

At this stage:
     ALL THE REMAINING FILES WERE INTACT & COULD BE READ OK,
     I JUST COULDN'T WRITE ANY :-(

ACTION #1 
I think it was about this time that CHKDSK reported about 9MB of
SUPERSTOR RESERVED DRIVE UNITS (or something similar that doesn't
usually appear).  Reread some old news from Frank Slootweg (sp?) about
a similar problem and found that the space might be in the BAD BITS of
DISK list, so I ran DISKOPT and found that most of the disk came back
(and I could write again.

** There was the usual disagreement between CHKDSK, DIR and SSTOR about
   how much disk was available.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATTEMPT #2
Delete lots of files to leave lots more than 3MB free on the
compressed partition, and try INSTALLing Treehouse again (brilliant
program by the way), same result as above.  Rerun DISKOPT to clean up
and DELETE LOTS MORE FILES.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATTEMPT #3
With about 9MB free (real space as I remember), the TREEHOUSE
installed perfectly.

WHY?
Don't know, maybe Treehouse's INSTALL keeps sending data to be written
after and earlier WRITE has failed ???

I'M STILL HAPPY TO USE IT ...
I have no qualms about using DRDOS including SUPERSTOR, in fact I
prefer DRDOS to MSDOS which I use at work, but it would be nice if
there were better diagnostic and repair utilities for SUPERSTOR.


Cheers  (from a previously skeptic :-)
Giovanni
-- 
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Giovanni Moretti                                                       ZL2BOI
Computer Science Department, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
G.Moretti@massey.ac.nz      Phone +64-6-356-9099            Fax 64-6-350-5611