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From: tlz@drutx.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Well, GEMBOOT _almost_ works....
Message-ID: <3478@drutx.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Apr-87 14:54:51 EST
Article-I.D.: drutx.3478
Posted: Tue Apr  7 14:54:51 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Apr-87 05:59:20 EST
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 52
Keywords: How to reformat your boot sector, too good to be true

I knew it was too good to be true, but I'm ALWAYS overly
optomistic...

I put GEMBOOT on my 20 Meg Supra system last week, turned on
the power, got a "logging in drive c:" message and sat back
while it ate my disk.  Ten minutes later (I was catatonic and
couldn't reach the reset button), it finished.  I looked...
there were 9857 files containing 123231206769813 bytes...files like
174Y$&*%$(*%Q(@ and ()*)(&$(#*^ and such ...geeez,
I've seen this before! Oh, well, I said, I'll just get the old
backup disks and start over.
Tried it again and everything seemed fine..until last Sunday.
Here's the scenerio.  I turn on the system and everything boots fine.
All 62 folders are "logged in".  Copy a few files from A: to
C:\TEMP\.  Go have a little bite to eat and watch the tube, so
off goes the system.  A little later, I turn on the system and
it starts "logging in drive c:" for a LONG, AGONIZING time. This
time I was not dazed, just extremely upset, so I hit reset.
The files in C: suffered the same sort of damage as before.
In addition, the boot sector was damaged.  After spending
4-5 hours rebuilding things and trying to re-establish the
Supra v2.61 autoboot function, I gave up and called Supra.
"Yes", they said. "GEMBOOT is bad. Trashes your disk. Don't use
it. Actually DECREASES your available folders to 20."  "And
here's how to reformat your boot sector.  Start formatting
the hard drive, wait a few seconds after is says 'please wait, etc'
and turn the computer off.  Boot from the floppy (which, hopefully,
contains all the hard disk utilities) and reformat the hard disk again.
This is the ONLY way to reformat a bad boot sector." Apparently,
supfmt.prg reads the boot sector, zeros it, formats the disk and finally
writes the data back onto the boot sector.  When you kill it in
the middle, the sector is left zeroed, forcing it to reformat when
the disk is reformatted.  Isn't this exciting?  

I don't know why this is happening.  Probably some bizzare, intertwined
series of dependencies like certain accessories and/or AUTO\*.prg
files.  Maybe a subtle bug in GEMBOOT.  Maybe both or none.  I don't
care.  I just wanna use my computer.

*** FLAME ON ***
THIS is why Atari doesn't distribute things to the public that they
aren't 100% convinced works correctly.  Its bad enough as it is that
some of us with access to USENET get burned, let alone the rest
of the ST world.  For my part, I've done my civic duty.  I took
a chance. I lost.   If any more "fixes" come around, I'll put
them in after a few hundred others and a few months go by.
*** FLAME OFF ***

I want new ROMs.  OK, Neil?

Terry Zrust @ AT&T Informations Systems Laboratories
Denver, CO.