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Path: utzoo!utcsri!utai!jenkin
From: jenkin@utai.UUCP (Michael Jenkin)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: generating bad blocks on atari disks
Message-ID: <389@utai.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Mar-85 11:53:30 EST
Article-I.D.: utai.389
Posted: Thu Mar 14 11:53:30 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Mar-85 12:42:32 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 18

Recently I saw an add in Antic or Analog for a software bad-block/custom
format program.  Does anyone know how a software bad-block generator
would work on an un-altered 810/1050 drive?  The obvious way would
be to perform alternating writes with different bit patterns until
a write error occurs, but this seems a little brute-force.
I don't have any documentation on the way the drive handles SIO commands,
but it might be possible to specify very short time-out times to the
device, or to interrupt it during the execution of a command, or maybe
there are undocumented CIO commands for the device?  Does anyone
out there have any ideas.


--
Michael Jenkin					 University of Toronto
{wearing my peril-sensitive sunglasses}
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