Subject: teledisk problem

From: "Damien Cymbal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 13 21:38:00 2003

Anybody seen this one?

I'm running into a problem with a set of disks (original Visual 1050 system
disks) where when teledisk gets to cyl 80 it pops up an error box "Drive A: is
not ready.  Please correct and press any key to continue".  Needless to say,
nothing I've tried gets past this error.  Teledisk usually seems fairly
tolerant of most errors and will keep chugging, but not so in this case.  I
tried a few versions, the latest I have is 2.16, all behave the same.

Any ideas?

dc

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From: Don Maslin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 00:47:01 2003

>tried a few versions, the latest I have is 2.16, all behave the same.

It is a little unclear whether you are trying to create a TeleDisk image 
file from the Visual 1050 disk or are trying to create a media copy from
a .TD0 file.  In either case, may we assume that drive A is a 96tpi 5.25"
drive and that you are in DOS and not in a DOS window?  

Give us a bit more to go on and perhaps someone can help you.  

                                                - don

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From: "Damien Cymbal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 05:22:00 2003

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Maslin" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 1:42 AM
Subject: Re: teledisk problem

> Give us a bit more to go on and perhaps someone can help you.

Sorry.  Yes, I am trying to create the .TD0 image from a 5.25" floppy quad
density (SSDD80/10).  This is pure DOS (6.22) no Windows in site anywhere.
Out of the 7 disks I've attempted, 3 of them have displayed this error.  The
help for teledisk says that this error is displayed when the drive door is
open or the disk is not inserted (obviously not the case).  I've tried
unseasting/reseating the disk several times but once it gets into this state
there seems to be no recovery.  Like I say, I have seen cases where teledisk
gets read errors during the .TD0 creation, but it usually will just report
them in its status window and keep on chugging.  Not so in this case.  I've
tried each of the suspect disks 3 times with the same results so I don't
think it is my drive being flakey, but unfortunately it is the only PC 5.25
I currently have running so I can't confirm that.  As mentioned I have not
had problems with other diskettes on this drive.

A couple of things I have thought of trying just for informational purposes
is (1) when teledisk reports the error, insert one of the successfully
imaged disks into the drive just to see if it really is a track 80 specific
issue with the disk or is teledisk has just gotten into some bad
unrecoverable state somehow (2) try another disk copy on the real machine
and if that succeeds without complaint try generating the .TD0 from the
duplicated disk.

That's about all I can think of to report.  Thanks for any other ideas.

dc

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From: Don Maslin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 18:26:01 2003

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Damien Cymbal wrote:

<snip>

> and if that succeeds without complaint try generating the .TD0 from the

Trying (1) is worth doing, but I have the feeling that (2) is the
more likely to succeed, since it is apparently the disk that is
causing the problem.  Witness the four that worked 'as advertised'.
I have experienced similar problems in the distant past, but for
the life of me cannot remember the outcome.  I suspect that it was
more like (2) than (1) though.
						- don