HDOS development

Readme 30/11/95

Since the last issue defrag has been fixed. This will now, optionally, recover any fragmented space on the hard drive caused by erasing files. It will also optimize and compress the directory and free space chains.

Be warned that on a heavily fragmented disk it could take some time. The machine must not be reset part way through as this will almost certainly corrupt the hard disk but it is safe to interrupt with the ESC key. The problem with the first version of defrag has been fixed.

Also there is a new program on the disk "insdf2" which will install the code part of defrag on the hard drive.

Another new program is SLEEP which will power down the spindle motor on some of the better behaved drives. I believe this is referred to as "a green feature". (Something to do with the environment and saving energy).

A final new program is called TESTIT this will simply save a short file to the hard drive and then read it back to prove that the system is ok. Surprisingly it will print ok on success.

The basic programs HDLOOK & SETTRAN will now work without the need for MASTERBASIC. I just assumed everyone used it.

A couple of changes have been made to the dos itself.  Interrupt handling has been improved and now there should be much less effect on interupt driven routines such as sound and screen colour changes during hard drive accesses. Load & Save are marginally faster.

Readme 21/11/95

Since the last issue I have found that defrag will cause all the files that have been deleted to re-appear in the root directory if you run the defrag option.

Please wait for the next version due end of Nov,95.

Some drives were refusing to initalise or power up and this should now have been fixed.

Some of the smarter drives allow the geometry to be translated from the actual physical drive to a virtual geometry. Some very smart drives even remember this remap across power offs.  If you have a drive that reports head sector and track values that are nonsense during hdfmt try running the basic program "settran". This will reset the translation back to the physical geometry. Whether this is then carried accross to the hdfmt routine depends on the drive features. The main thing to look out for is the reported disk size.

Hdfmt will now let you manually override the geometry that has been found automatically. Care should be taken as values that exceed the drives current geometry will cause errors and the drive will most likely not format.

Readme file 3/11/95

Since the provisional manual was written I have made a few changes to the programs on the disk.

Firstly the format routine will now check for bad sectors and remove them from use.

Some of the disk functions have been speeded up but not so as you would notice.

I have included a provisional program for defragmenting the hard disk. The BASIC loader if called "lddfrag" and the code part is "defrag". This is by no means complete but I include it so you can keep a check on your disk usage.