Date   : Tue, 20 Nov 1990 20:17:20 GMT
From   : swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!nosun!qiclab!techbook!fzsitvay@ucsd.edu (Frank Zsitvay)
Subject: Strange Kaypro problems

   A public 'thank you' to don maslin for sending me a boot disk for my
geriatric kaypro 2/83.   it's people like him who make this hobby worth
pursuing...
 
   But, i am having some problems that are very strange - unless they
are common to kaypro machines.  (which i am not)
 
   first, i formatted a bunch of blanks so i could put the 'master' in
a safe place.  during the format process, the machine had to retry several
tracks.  the most it had to on any single track was once, but still this
is somewhat unerving.  ironically, it has the same pattern of track retries
for a given disk no matter which floppy it's in.  by the by, i did this with
the 'mfdisk' multi-format program, selecting kaypro double density.
 
   well, each disk that formatted checked out with no errors, so that's
not critical...
 
   however, using the copy program (much like diskcopy in msdos) it crashed
rather beautifully, all kinds of trash on the screen.  however, an ESC would
bring it back to the CCP.  oh, it also beeps with each new helping of
screen trash.
 
   and last, but not least, STAT dies upon loading.  no error message, not
a peep.  loads and stops dead in it's tracks.  the reset button is the
only way out. (aside from turning the machine off and on...)
 
   PIP does work, and i used that to copy the system disk, as well as
SYSGEN to transfer the operating system.
 
   now, i know the disk heads are probably filthy from sitting in a
dusty warehouse for a good many years, which would account for the
problems formatting disks, so i'll pry the machine apart and spend
some time with alcohol-soaked Q-tips and maybe even a head cleaner as
a last resort, but i doubt dirty r/w heads would cause copy and stat
to crash like they did.  (whenever the heads on my trs2 mod 12 get
dirty enough to cause problems, i usually get a BDOS error, but never
a crash.)

   any help would be greatly appreciated...  i like this little machine,
now if i can get it to work properly, i'd like to add dsqd drives to
it.  anyone know where i can find a pd hacked bios for that??


-- 
fzsitvay@techbook.COM - but don't quote me on that....

American Oil Company motto - Bend over, We'll pump!!!


End of INFO-CPM Digest V90 Issue #188
*************************************