Date   : Wed, 15 Oct 1986 10:03:43 EDT
From   : SAGE@LL.ARPA
Subject: Trouble with LBR Files

Bill Houle posted on net.micro.cpm:
 
> Near the end of summer, I took our Kaypro in for drive alignment.  Its
> been about a month-and-a-half and we've had no trouble...until now.
> All of the programs seem to be OK (read: no panicky phone calls from
> home) except for NULU (LU, LDIR, etc.)  It does not seem to be able to
> read old library files (that is, created during the pre-align period).
> BAD DIRECTORY or INSUFFICIENT MEMORY are the error messages.
 
It seems unlikely to me that the LBR files are the problem if all the other
files read all right, unless those files just happen to be stored, for
example, on the inner tracks of the diskettes while the other files are on
the outer tracks.  If you have the CRC program, you can run that on the
files to determine whether they read correctly or not.
 
The BAD DIRECTORY message suggests that something appears to be wrong with
the first sector of the files, where the LBR directory is stored.  The memory
error message may be related to the same thing.  But I cannot see how aligning
the drives would have anything to do with such a problem.  There are various
useful diagnostics that could be performed (with DU, disk utility, for
example), but that would be hard enough locally and impossible long distance.
 
Another way to check the LBR files would be to copy them to a new diskette.
If you use the PIP verify option (PIP B:=A:NAME.LBR[V]) the file will be
copied and checked.  If the source diskette is unreadable, you will get a
BDOS error message (BAD SECTOR).  If you did not suggest that LU and LDIR
as well as NULU complain about the LBR files, I would think that something
happened to your copy of NULU.
 
If the files seem to be all right but still do not work, I would suspect that
something has gone wrong with the correspondence between the disk directory
(and its sector allocations for the files) and the actual file allocations.
But such a problem would make a lot of the COM files fail to operate.
 
I'm not sure what else to suggest to you.  Good luck.  If you really get
desperate and want to send me a diskette, I would be willing to take a look
at it and try to figure out what happened.  You can reach me at MIT Lincoln
Lab, PO Box 73, Lexington, MA 02173-0073.
 
                        Jay Sage