From:	Bob Jonkman <bjonkman AT sobac DOT com>
Organization:	SOBAC Microcomputer Services
To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date:	Mon, 8 Nov 1999 01:04:37 -0500
MIME-Version:	1.0
Subject:	Recovering a STACVOL.DSK
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Hi all:  Some time a go I installed DR-DOS v7.02 on my mother-in-
law's computer in order to be able to use Stacker on her 55 Mbyte 
hard drive (it's an eight-year-old computer, when 55 Mbytes was a big 
deal).  Worked like a charm, until a power failure this past weekend. 
 Now, no matter what I try, I can't get Stacker to load.  The 
computer boots OK (mostly), but shows as drive C: the actual hard 
drive, not the stacked drive.  No sign of a D:  STACVOL.DSK is still 
intact.  Running STACKER.EXE always gives the error "Stacker not 
loaded", no matter what the parameters.

I suspect it's to do with a corrupt STACKER.INI file -- the one in 
the root directory is 55 bytes in size, but contains only three block 
characters when viewed  with the "type" command.  In contrast, 
STACKER.INI on one of my computers contains 

=====Start Quote=====
/I-
/P=1
/F=32
/DIR=C:\DRDOS
C:\STACVOL.DSK,SW
=====End Quote=====

While DOSBOOK alludes to the existence of STACKER.INI, it says, more 
or less, "you should never need to modify this file yourself".  

Is STACKER.INI documented somewhere?  Is there an exhaustive list of 
command switches? Can I re-construct STACKER.INI by hand for her 
computer?  Any other hints on recovering the stacked volume? Which 
are the actual files to get loaded during the boot process?  What's 
STACLOAD.EXE? (.COM?)  STACKER.BIN?  STACHIGH.SYS?  I think I figured 
out the difference between STACKER.EXE (the User Interface for 
regular Stac operations on the Hard Drive) and STACKER.COM (the 
utility for un-STACking floppy drives).

Just as a matter of interest, AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS are still 
OK.  Of course, they generate a pile of errors when the stacked 
volume isn't loaded, but that's expected.  I've renamed them and 
substituted minimal files, just enough to boot.  As I understand, I 
don't need to list device drivers for the Stacker components to load.

I've tried running the SETUP from the DR-DOS v7.03 distribution.  At 
first it said I needed some 600 Kbytes to run SETUP, but when I freed 
up that much space (by judiciously deleting some of the files in 
C:\DRDOS) it wanted some 6 Mbytes to perform a complete install.  Of 
course, all the space on the disk is used up by STACVOL.DSK...  I've 
restored the C:\DRDOS files by manually PNUNPACKing them from the 
v7.03 distribution (leaving me with a mixture of v7.02 and v7.03 
files -- thank goodness DR-DOS isn't as particular about version 
numbers as MS-DOS!)

Any hints gratefully appreciated!


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=====
Bob Jonkman                               Voice: +1-905-793-4537
SOBAC Microcomputer Services              E-Fax: +1-603-308-6118
4 Gold Pine Court                      mailto:bjonkman AT sobac DOT com
Brampton  ON  Canada  L6S 2K6       
Networking   --   Office & Business Automation   --   Consulting
RSA Fingerprint:  9FAF  A6AC  B567  BC10  8973  7CF0  CB27  0317
RSA ID: 0xAE33E989    mailto:bjonkman AT sobac DOT com?subject=send_key

Web site temporarily at     http://www.geocities.com/bob_jonkman

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