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From: calway@ecsvax.UUCP (James Calloway)
Newsgroups: net.micro.cbm
Subject: Re: Question: I/O to 1541 and BASIC tokens
Message-ID: <349@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Dec-84 00:09:40 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.349
Posted: Thu Dec 13 00:09:40 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Dec-84 07:29:02 EST
References: <1222@hou4b.UUCP>
Organization: The News and Observer
Lines: 29

I'll take a crack at the first two questions:
1. Where to find list of BASIC tokens. 
See page 120 and 122 of the January 1985 issue of Compute!'s Gazette.

2. When and why to initialize the disk drive.
The initialize command ("i") forces the disk drive to re-read the Block Allocation Map,
which tells the drive which parts of the disk are in use
and which are free.
It is always a good idea to initialize whenever you switch disks,
because the BAM the drive holds in its memory will be that of the
previous disk, and the drive may unwittingly screw up the current disk
because it thinks it still has the previous one.
Normally the drive will automatically initialize itself if it detects
that the disk has a different ID code (the two-character identification
you give the disk when you NEW it for the first time) from that of the previous disk.
If you switch disks and the two have the same ID, you probably will
get a "directory error" when you call the directory because it won't match the BAM that the machine has in memory.
Also, failing to close the channels to the drive before switching disks
may cause problems, although I am not sure of that.

-- 

James  Calloway
The News and Observer
Box 191
Raleigh, N.C. 27602
(919) 829-4570
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