Date   : Wed, 21 Nov 1990 16:43:09 GMT
From   : mcdchg!tellab5!nucsrl!accuvax.nwu.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!ils.nwu.edu!aristotle.ils.nwu.edu!lynch@rutgers.edu (Richard Lynch)
Subject: Re: Early microcomputer networks

In article <1990Nov20.201509.14205@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> 
cos@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Ofer Inbar) writes:
> We had an Apple ][ lab with a Corvus in elementary school; it was
> installed when I was in sixth grade (1981).  The one thing I best
> remember about it was how often it crashed, and how often we lost all
> of our files.  I really hated the thing, I almost expected to lose my
> files every time I went into the lab.  The year I graduated from 8th
> grade they got a second Corvus (ack!).
> 
> I used to use the Apple monitor program to write short machine
> language programs, and would save them on the Corvus using BSAVE.  The
> computer teacher/sysadmin used to blame me for bringing down the
> Corvus by writing binary files to it.
And he/she/it was absolutely RIGHT!!!    You ex- little s*&%.  :-)
The BSAVE command takes several optional arguements.  There are two 
numbers to include at the end that specified volume and directory on a 
system such as the Corvus.  If you left them off, you ended up saving your 
machine language right on top of the directory structure on the corvus.  I 
saw students do this when I was student teaching.  If only there had been 
a manual around, I could have told them what to type in or at least have 
told them it wouldn't work and why.  As it was, they were using some 
program that would calculate the numbers automatically and it worked great 
for the standard (disk in slot 6?) setup, but didn't append the extra 
numbers for the Corvus.

"TANSTAAFL" Rich lynch@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu