Re: Question about modifying DOS 3.3 or ProDOS

[Jerry <awanderin@yahoo.ca>]

"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> writes:

> Jayson Smith wrote:
>> Ah. I was just curious. I assume that means there's not a simple
>> poke I can enter to change the time DOS moves the head in an I/O
>> error condition? It's not really that I hate the noise, I just think
>> DOS wastes a lot of time, since in most cases, moving back a few
>> tracks would result in a valid track, unless the drive door is open,
>> no disk is inserted, or the disk is damaged or not formatted.
>> Jayson
>
> You can change the number of tracks that recalibrate seeks back, but
> after it's done, DOS expects the drive head to be positioned at track 0,
> so there isn't much room to decrease the count.

Perhaps this is an off-the-wall idea: greatly decrease the number of
tracks the recalibrate seek routine uses (say only 8 tracks).  When an
I/O error occurs, and the head is out way past track 8 (e.g. track
29), multiple I/O errors would occur until the disk head was actually
on track zero, but the buzz would only happen after the fourth recal.
Would it be much slower this way?

--
Jerry    awanderin at yahoo dot ca