🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1787@borabora.omni.com> bob@omni.com (Bob Weissman) writes:
>What are the differences between SpinRite I and II?

Some of the differences:
1) Spinrite II supports all (or most) schemes for large disk partitions,
including DOS 4.x.
2) Spinrite I required a special configuration step at installation,
which required that the distribution disk be booted.  This was cumbersome,
and meant that your system's boot floppy had to be the same media as
the Spinrite distribution media.  Spinrite II can be loaded/run from 
a copy on a different format media than the distribution.
3) Other points which to me seem less important are:
-It maintains a detailed technical log of its findings and actions.
-It marks bad sectors in the low-level formatting of the drive somehow.
-It recognizes copy protection schemes and won't disturb them.
-It works with controllers that have full-track buffering.  With Spinrite I
you had do temporarily disable the buffering.

>Is it worth it to upgrade?

In my case, I had no choice, since I couldn't make use of Spinrite on my
system with a DOS 4.01 80-meg partition.  If you bought Spirite after
August 1, 1989, upgrade is $15, and I would say it is definitely worth it.
You have to send in the front cover of the original Spinrite owner's guide
with your money to get the upgrade.  If you bought it before Aug 1, upgrade
is $25.

-- 
John Dudeck                           "You want to read the code closely..." 
jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu             -- C. Staley, in OS course, teaching 
ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549          Tanenbaum's MINIX operating system.