Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!pollux!dalsqnt!rpp386!pigs!haugj From: haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: How can you check that a readable floppy is in a drive? Summary: is your drive up to speed when you query it??? Message-ID: <223@pigs.UUCP> Date: 11 Aug 88 21:30:40 GMT References: <1736@erix.ericsson.se> Reply-To: haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie) Organization: Big "D" Oil and Gas Lines: 18 In article <1736@erix.ericsson.se> mike@erix.ericsson.se (Mike Williams) writes: |is in a cerain drive (for example b:). I have tried using |int 13h with ah=4 to do a verify on a sector on the floppy. This |always works OK on the second or third attempt. But if the disk |is not readable and one tries again with a new disk always |fails on the first new attempt with 'Drive failed to respond' in ah |(80H) on return. The next attempt gives 'address mark not found' |and 'requested sector not found' (06H) in ah and the third attempt |works. it may be that your floppy drive has not yet spun up to speed until the third request is issued. try sticking a delay in between the first drive query and the second. don't forget that physical hardware is SLOW by comparision to CPU's. -- jfh@rpp386.uucp (The Beach Bum at The Big "D" Home for Wayward Hackers) "Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity" -- Hanlon's Razor