Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!AC.DAL.CA!BRIGHT From: BRIGHT@AC.DAL.CA (BOB BRIGHT) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Problem with TOS recognizing media changes Message-ID: <8903231500.AA08372@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 23 Mar 89 11:17:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 56 I recently noticed some strange behaviour issuing from my ST. I have a 520STfm, one of the new ones with the built-in double-sided drive and the so-called "Mega" roms. Here's the strangeness: Cold boot the machine with a freshly-TOS-formatted disk in drive A:. Open a window for A: on the desktop, and create a folder (called "FOLDER", say) on the blank disk. Double click on FOLDER to get a subdirectory showing "0 bytes used in 0 items". Go ahead and hit the escape key a gazillion times. All that will happen is that the screen window updates; the drive never comes on, since the current subdirectory is cached, and no media change is detected. Now remove this disk from drive A: and insert another blank disk (or at least, one which doesn't have any folders at all on it). Hit ; the drive spins, and the (non-existent) sub-directory on the new disk gets read. Now, the next few presses of the escape key won't do anything besides update the window on the screen, but every fourth press of escape _will_ force the disk to be re-read. I'm not sure why it's doing this, but for some reason every fourth press of escape is forcing a media change. Note that this doesn't happen under "normal" circumstances. I think I recall from somewhere that Alan Pratt said he was going to make force a media change in TOS 1.4, but the only way I can force a media change with my roms is if I hit four times and the window on my screen is showing a non-existent subdirectory on a disk which _doesn't have any other subdirectories_. What happens if the disk does have other subdirectories? Glad you asked; this is the really weird part. Remove the second disk from drive A: and insert a third disk, this one with a least one folder on it, but _without_ a folder called "FOLDER". Hit ; the drive spins, and the (non-existent) sub-directory gets read. BUT...No matter how many times I hit from here on in, the drive light never comes on and the disk never gets read. In fact, my machine COMPLETELY REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE A MEDIA CHANGE. I can take out the third disk and insert any disk whatsoever, but no amount of standing on the escape key will read the new disk. The only way that I can force a read is to back out of the FOLDER subdirectory to the root. What's the explanation for all this strangeness? Should I worry about it? I'm fairly sure that my other ST (a 1040 with the old roms) doesn't exhibit this behaviour (though I haven't actually gotten around to verifying it). Ever since I started using the 520 at work (my 1040 is now at home), I've noticed that WordPerfect has been trashing a lot of files. The only explanation I could get out of WordPerfectCorp is that WP doesn't live very happily on small machines. But now I'm wondering if WP's internal directory caching isn't running headlong into this strange little "feature" of TOS that I've located. Comments? BBB Bob Bright Philosophy Dept. Dalhousie University Halifax, NS B3H 3J5