Re: Weird DOS INIT bug

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Dave Althoff writes ...
> 
> I remembered the other odd INIT thing I have noticed...
> 
> I seem to recall that on the unenhanced ][e (perhaps on other machines; I
> have not had this happen in years), I have had "INIT" commands get 'stuck'.
> 
> Here's the dangerous situation:
> 
> I'm trying to format a disk on S6,D2, and something goes wrong.  The drive
> keeps recalibrating, and clearly this INIT is going to fail.
> 
> I do a 3-finger salute and warmstart the machine, which boots from
> S6,D1...a good disk.  Here's where the wierdness starts--once DOS has
> loaded, but before the greeting program comes up, DOS immediately begins
> to format the disk in S6,D1!
> 
 ....

> It requires a very specific set of circumstances for this to happen:  you
> must interrupt an INIT by performing a warm boot.  Stopping the INIT with
> a RESET, cycling the power, or allowing the INIT to crash will prevent
> problems.
> 
> Now...Am I nuts, or has this happened to anyone else?  8-)
 ....

     Hard to say. We've never owned a IIe; and, I do not recall running
into the problem on our other II's.

     It is surprising that a process could, at least partly, survive a
warm boot. One possibility is that some piece of hardware, perhaps a
Slot card, is asserting an interrupt at or just after the warm boot
Reset. The interrupt could steer execution to some part of the INIT code
and produce strange results.



Rubywand