Re: "unable to load basic.system"

["Roger Johnstone" <rojaws@mac.com>]

In article <9f61cf69.0204081239.78052e47@posting.google.com>, 
ludditetech@mac.com (Simon Williams) wrote:

> Here's an irritating problem:
>
> I am unable to successfully copy the BASIC.SYSTEM file onto diskette.
> I have both a //c with external drive and a //e with a single drive
> (actually a duodisk with one busted drive). I have tried 3 different
> Apple Utilities disks,  5 different source disks and 3 different
> destination disks on both computers.
> (if your keeping tabs, that's 90 different combinations -- or an
> entire day shot...)
> I've not had this problem in the past, though I have noted that the
> copy utilities on the System disks seem to be less than 100% reliable.
> Also, all the other files (PRODOS and various ABASIC programs) copied
> fine and work if I boot with a different disk.
> The destination disks I'm using are new but were originally formatted
> DOS 3.3. and had some elementary school programs on them. I've
> reformatted them to ProDOS in the past without problems.
> I've catalogued the disks and they show BASIC.SYSTEM being present, 21
> blocks and the "check that disk is readable" utility tells me they're
> okay. But I still get the "UNABLE TO LOAD BASIC.SYSTEM" message.
>
> I'm stumped.

I would assume from that error message that ProDOS has found BASIC.SYSTEM
and encounters an error when trying to load it. Which versions of ProDOS and
BASIC.SYSTEM are you using? Maybe there was an incompatibilty between
older/newer versions at some point.

Can you boot into BASIC from a good disk and then run BASIC.SYSTEM from one
of the ones that won't boot? Use the hyphen (run anything) command,
"-BASIC.SYSTEM".

--
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand

Apple II - FutureCop:LAPD - iMac Game Wizard
http://homepage.mac.com/rojaws
________________________________________________________________________
"But what is it good for?"
    Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM
    commenting on the micro chip, 1968