Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!bath63!pes
From: pes@ux63.bath.ac.uk (Smee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Rumblings
Message-ID: <2422@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Apr 88 10:50:15 GMT
References: <36500044@iuvax> <617@nunki.usc.edu>
Reply-To: pes@ux63.bath.ac.uk (Smee)
Organization: AUCC c/o University of Bath
Lines: 34

In article <617@nunki.usc.edu> rjung@sal22.usc.edu (Robert Jung) writes:
>P.S. Tangent time: Recently, I've been getting a strange bug with my 1040...
>When I get a directory from the desktop, switch disks, then press ESCape,
>I get the new directory (of the new disk), but mixed with some of the
>files from the *old* directory! Whatsamatter?

I'm not going to claim this is definitive, but...  I occasionally saw things
like that myself.  After a bit of investigating, I determined that it only
ever happened to me (and reliably repeatedly happened) if the two disks
involved had the same disk serial number.  There's been a lot of mention of
disk serial numbers recently, so I won't repeat where to find them.

Duplicate disk serial numbers are produced by some (flawed) PD formatters,
including early versions of TWISTER, I'm told.  The later TWISTERs, and
the later DCFORMAT's, are OK.  The standard desktop formatter is OK.
Dup serial numbers will also be got if you use one of the proprietary
'protected disk copiers' such as PROCOPY, or anything else that does a
full logical bitcopy of the disk.

I'm not absolutely positive, but I believe it might be true that in order
to get the effect you describe you need not only to have disks with
duplicate serial numbers (and use them back to back) but that you might
also need to be running one of the PD disk caches, such as Moshe Braner's
SCACHE or the recent ACACHE (whose author I don't recall).  I seem to remember
that if you don't have a cache in, the more likely effect is that the second
disk (the one where the problem becomes visible) will have a window list
which includes a lot of file icons with no (or garbage) names and apparent
0 lengths.

In any case, if this is what is causing the problem, you can terminally
garbage the second disk, if you write to it while the system is in this
confused state as to what is on it.  So, you should check, and clean up
your act.  There was a recently posted tool (BOOTSEC, I think it was
called) which makes it easy to check disk serial numbers.