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[3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org]

Sindi Keesan wrote:
>
> We tested out the new make_fd.zip
> 
> 1.  It does not work when you put in a 720K floppy disk 

Duh. 

> - did you specify for #1 a 100% good 1.44M floppy disk?  

Booting Basic Linux from floppies                                             
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                                             
 
You need two 1.44mb floppy disks.  
Delete all files from the floppies.         

> Once you have tried to use a 720K with a disk image twice 
> the size, there may be no way to repair the disk.

Why not?  Just fdimage a good image (designed for 720mb).

> Is there some way for the program to check disk size?

Is there some way to check that the user has read the
instructions?

> 2.  It does not work when there are files on disk #2.  

See above.

> Jim suggests adding something to check for this 

To check whether the user has followed the instructions?  
I don't think so.  If the user can't understand (or can't 
be bothered reading) those very simple instructions, then 
he's on his own.   

> 3.  It still gives 'Divide overflow'.
> 
> This has something to do with vdisk from PCDOS 3.3, which 
> does not work predictably with newer computers, 

That's a pity.

> he used xmsdsk (?) and this needed himem.sys and with these 
> from DRDOS he put together something similar that works and 
> we will post this somewhere 

Probably too big.  I don't want to increase the size of
make_fd.zip much more than its present size.  DOS 3.3 and
vimage were relatively small.  Once you move to a more
up-to-date DOS with HIMEM.SYS, the size nearly doubles.
That's too much overhead for something most people never
use.

I'll have to reconsider the whole make_fd method.  I wish
somebody had told me a year ago that DOS 3.3 doesn't work
reliably on newer computers.  Since all of my computers 
were made in the 1990's (and DOS 3.3 works fine on all of 
them) there is no way I could have know this.  

It's just as well I am targetting BL3 at 386/486/P1 systems 
-- apparently I can't rely on my stuff working on anything
much later than that.

Cheers,
Steven