Re: Saving to Floppy Disk under OS/2

[Robert Holmgren holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to note from xywrite@xxxxxxxx Tue, 3 Mar 1998 00:54:56 -0500 (EST)

> Maybe I'll try that. I use pre-formatted disks, so I'd think they'd
> work.

Pre-formatted for what machine? That's a red flag for me. If it's
preformatted for VFAT (do Win95 floppies use VFAT? I forget), OS/2
doesn't understand that. In ANY case, I'd reformat under OS/2 _on the
machine that experiences the error_. Sometimes floppies read on one
machine but not on another.

Other possibilities: are you using a SCSI adaptor? (Just guessing here,
but possibly the floppy is wired up to the IDE adaptor, yet the SCSI BIOS
thinks that it controls the floppy. In which case, somebody ends up with
an unknown device.) The thing that nags at me is that "Unknown unit"
really is a hardware issue. It could be that a device driver, e.g.
IBM1S506.ADD, is finding a device that that it can't control, and
coughing momentarily. Does PAUSEONERROR=YES in CONFIG.SYS? Put a "/V"
parameter after OS2DASD.DMD and "/!V" after IBM1S506.ADD device
statements, to see if info is generated about an unknown device.

Another possibility is that it's a slow floppy drive, and for some reason
(maybe a very fast CPU), OS/2 is timing out on reading it. I have
noticed that with slow-ish CD-ROM readers and fast CPUs
(I have a P2 266 with a gigantic CD-ROM cache), when I try to do a
directory listing of a subdirectory under XyWrite, the system returns an
error to XyW before the CD is even up and spinning at high speed! You
might try getting the floppy spinning, then re-issue the SAve command and
see if it still says "Unknown unit".

I think if FP32 was really unstable, there'd have been an FP33 by now.
IBM is very conscientious about this stuff.
There's also a good bit of new functionality
(especially in OS/2 v4, where FP6 is really light years from v4 GA).

Try some of these things out. Good luck.

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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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