Wordmark Systems
2705 Pinewood Dr.
Garland, TX 75044
January 20, 1989
Dear Mr. van Nisselroy,
Here are the files I placed in the Compuserve and
Genie libraries here; some are duplicated, however, for my
own convenience. The first diskette contains the file
READ.ME and can be typed or printed with the "C" command.
The "manual" , two files named MAIN.DOC and TECH.DOC need to
be deARCed before being printed (they are formatted for an
8.5"x11" printer page layout). Both of the .DOC files will
not fit on a single density diskette, so each should be
restored to a blank diskette before printing. A collection
of utilities are also on the first diskette, but they are
also on the third diskette, ready to run. This is jUst a
second copy (in the format they are provided on Compuserve
and Genie).
The second disk contains the source files to MYDOS and
the BUILD utility used to create a modified version of
MYDOS. Again, there is not sufficient room on a single
density diskette to restore all of the source files, so you
should restore MDOS*.* to one diskette, MDUP*.* to another,
and BUILD.* to either of the first two or to a third. After
assembling MDOS.OBJ and MDUP.OBJ, copy both files to the
disk containing BUILD.OBJ, run BUILD.OBJ, and after pressing
the START key twice, the new MYDOS should be running, ready
to be saved to disk with the H command.
The third disk is a bootable copy of MYDOS, with copies
of most of the utility programs both in the root directory
and in the RAMDISK: directory.
There are three relatively obvious problems with this
version of MYDOS: the "/X" modifier does not work properly
in the "C" command, the "J" command does not properly format.
the destination diskette (omitting "/X" is the same as
including it), and hardware errors (bad sectors, etc.) are
reported with the wrong error code fairly often. These seem
to have arisen when we converted the code from the AMAC
assembler to the MAC/65 assembler.
I have been informed that the Atari XF 551 drive does
not pay any attention to the configure commands issued by
MYDOS (unlike other double sided drives), but uses a special
"format double sided" command, so the easiest way to format
a disk double sided on the XF 551 for MYDOS is to format it
double sided using some utility specifically provided for
that purpose (by Atari?) .Then issue the "I" command and
reformat it with a response of 1/N when MYDOS asks for the
t
drive number. The problem is actually that MYDOS does not
inform the XF 551 that the diskette is to be double sided --
so the drive always formats the disk single sided.
A better solution, involving more work, is to modify the
code in MDOS1.M65 or MDOS2.M65 (I do not remember exactly
where the formatting code is) to issue the new double-sided
format command to the drive if formatting a double sided
drive, and if an error occurs issue the standard format
command -- this would handle both the Astra/Trak/Percom/etc.
type drives and the new XF 551 drives, though the older
drive types will be a little slower and noisier to format.
To copy from one disk to another with a single drive,
just issue the "C" command with only one file name, say
D1:BIGDATA and it will copy small files correctly, and
should copy large files correctly as well. If the "/X"
modifier worked with the "C" command (as it used to), then
you could copy changing the name of the file and still use a
single disk drive. But it does not in this version.
I will collect my posted changes, as well as those that
I see on Usenet and Compuserve here, and pass them on to you
periodically. And thank you for your encouragement.
Enjoy it well,
Charles Marslett