Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!feg From: feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Leading Edge model "M" Message-ID: <31108@clyde.ATT.COM> Date: 10 Aug 88 19:22:49 GMT References: <12745@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <6782@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany NJ Lines: 24 In article <6782@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>, ins_agwa@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Gunther Wil Anderson) writes: > In article <12745@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, musa@brahms.berkeley.edu (Math Undergrad Student Assoc) writes: > > Leading Edge is notorious for not-quite-compatible machines. I own an > "M" from the dawn of time and have had relative few problems with it, > but every now and then, I run into an incompatibility. For instance, I > cannot run any Electronic Arts programs, and indeed several other > programs also fail for various reasons. These reasons are invariably > related to copy protection schemes, but unless you are planning to use > only unprotected software, you could be in trouble. > If you are using msdos 2.11 that came with the PC, more likely your compatibility problems are due to the placement of the boot record in the boot sector. For reasons best known to Leading Edge and Microsoft, the boot record is located starting at offset 3 instead of B as in all other PC's in the world. Some programs look at the boot record where they expect it to be, and finding it incomprehensible call it quits. There are a very few which know about the switch and account for it. Fortunately, most programs don't bother looking at all and therefore give no trouble. The way out of it is to get hold of Sperry's msdos v3.2 for their Model HT (The Sperry machine is identical to the L.E. Model M). Forrest Gehrke