From: Christopher Croughton <crough45 AT amc DOT de>
Message-Id: <97Jul24.100629gmt+0100.17030@internet01.amc.de>
Subject: Re: floppy-copy errors
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 09:11:02 +0100
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Andrew McLachlan <MCLACHLA AT tui DOT lincoln DOT ac DOT nz> wrote:

> I have found that if I clean boot, then the errors disappear.  
> Adding other programs makes the errors recur.  However, after many, 
> many tests I have yet to establish any logical pattern in the 
> results as to which setups work and which don't.  The same problems 
> occur with DR-DOS, but *much less* frequently with MS-DOS (i.e., 
> only 1 file mis-copied out of 135).  

I've been using MSDOS since version 2.0, and I've never had a data
error like that.  I've occasionally had disk errors which result in
an error prompt (the traditional "Abort or Retry?" type things),
but never data corruption in a file which could be read from the floppy.
And I've transferred many gigabytes to and from floppy, still averaging
several files over 500K per week (it's my transfer mechanism between home
and work).

Note: I've never used DR-DOS or Novell DOS, and I'm still not running
OPENDOS because of incompatibilities.  If this is an OPENDOS error
then it's very serious.

You say "adding other programs" - do you mean TSRs or just running programs?
Which other programs?

> I have tried swapping the floppy disk drive (and cable) from my 
> working 486 system, but this made no difference.  The remaining 
> possibilities are something to do with DR/NW/OpenDOS, the 
> motherboard, or the cpu.  Any thoughts and opinions would be 
> appreciated.

Any of those, plus whatever "other programs" you're running.  I assume 
you've tried using different floppies as well...

> Dept of Entomology & Animal Ecology, P.O. Box 84, Lincoln University, 

Well an Entomology department sound like the place to find bugs, no?  <g>

Chris