Subject: Factory Formatted Floppy Diskette Problems

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

NOTICE

Date: March 12, 1999 Issue Number: 1130

Subject: Factory Formatted Floppy Diskette Problems

Product: All Hurco Machines using High Density 1.44 Meg Floppies

Description: DO NOT USE PREFORMATTED DISKS IN HURCO MACHINES!!!!!

The boot record on a floppy disk helps identify the format to the operating system. On preformatted disks some of the boot record information may be missing. Although most preformatted disks will work fine with DOS and Windows, Ultimax requires that all the boot record information is present. or the IFX disk subsystem will reject these disks. Ultimax will return an error message such as:

UNABLE TO CHANGE TO SELECTED DRIVE

THE FEATURE IS NOT IMPLEMENTED

or

UNABLE TO READ DISK DIRECTORY

THE FEATURE IS NOT IMPLEMENTED

Either of these will occur the first time the floppy is accessed after insertion into the drive. Subsequent accesses will return a different error message:

ERROR READING DISK.

THE DEVICE NAME WAS NOT FOUND.

The error messages are different because we monitor the disk change line. This lets us perform the mount function during the first access only. Subsequent accesses know the disk is already mounted and saves the time (and workspace) of performing another mount. The solution to this problem is simple. The user should format the disks with a PC or the Ultimax machine before using them. This will ensure the format is correct and eliminate the problem.