Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!bbn.com!slackey
From: slackey@bbn.com (Stan Lackey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Help!
Message-ID: <38777@bbn.COM>
Date: 17 Apr 89 21:33:44 GMT
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: slackey@BBN.COM (Stan Lackey)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 37

Well, I tried a few new&different things over the weekend, and ran into
a few good problems.

1. I am trying to use SIO directly.  I am doing this so I can do physical
   sector accessing of the disk.  (I really want to do this, so don't try
   to talk me out of it.)  I was successful in reading 1050 and 810 density
   disks, on both the 1050 and XF551.  I haven't tried writing yet.
 
   My problem is: I get error# 138,139,144 which are device errors, NAK's
   and timeouts accessing DSDD disks on the XF551.  I assumed that you
   just set the byte count from 128 to 256.  Some of the data I read
   might have been right, but with all the trash it was hard to tell.  I
   tried setting the byte count back to 128, but the symptoms were the
   same.  I turned the drive off and back on again, and got the same.
   Apparently, there is something different you must do when accessing DD
   disks.

2. I couldn't get AMAC (the Atari assembler) to work under DOSXE.  It may be
   because you need the DOS 2 handler in memory to read the assembler in, but
   it takes up too much space.  Is there any way to get around this, or 
   possibly get a DOSXE version of the assembler?  I believe AMAC is copy-
   protected.  Once I tried copying it to another disk (so I could rename it
   to AUTORUN.SYS, not to pirate it!) and the copied version did not work.
   I had made my assembly source under DOSXE, and could not assemble it.
   So, I was about to copy it to a DOS 2 disk when I remembered that DOS 2
   support under DOSXE is read-only!  Now what?!  Then I remembered... C:!
   I got my shovel and dug out the ol' program recorder, copied to C:, and
   it worked!  Of course, now under DOS 2 I do C C:,D1:FOO.ASM and get the
   response ILLEGAL OPERATION or something.  Oh well... 10 DIM A$(128), 
   20 OPEN #2,4,0,"C:", 30 OPEN #3,8,0,"D:FOO.ASM", etc.  At last this worked!

Well that's it.  I am SECTORing for two reasons:  one to be able to transfer
files between Atari and PC's, and the other for a program I am writing.
If you know the answer (or even just guesses-I'll try anything!) to #1, 
PLEASE answer.  #2 I can get around, although I would like to do all my 
development under DOSXE.
Thanks!  -Stan