Floppy failure with DOSMerge

[Mike McBain]

We are experiencing a problem with DOSMerge under Microport SysV/AT.

We are running Microport V/AT version 2.4 and DOSMerge 2.0 on a Wyse
286 with 1.5 MB of RAM installed (This is not our primary machine). 
We have one 70MB hard disk and one 40MB hard disk plus a 1.2MB 
floppy drive. Everything seems to work fine under SysV/AT. 

*** BUG #1 - DOS drive A: access

In the bugs section of the DOS Merge 286 Administrator's Manual,
point (3) mentions that there are occasional problems with drive A:
access.

We experience difficulties on almost every access (Especially on low
density disks.) On average it takes 2 minutes to select the drive or
get a DIR listing. Seldom do we get a prompt response from a
diskette.

After this sort of trouble, upon leaving DOS, UNIX generates:

	fdintr: error: unexpected irq - state = 0 sis[0] = BC

We do not know what this error actually meens but, having observed
this message, if the user attempts to run vi or kermit, the system
hangs, while other programs appear to be unaffected. Worst of all,
when in this state, files that are created or linked are sometimes
removed when *inevitably* the system is shut down and restarted.

As an aside, it might be worth noting that "dosasgn +a6" exacerbates
the problem.

We hoped that the upgrade to DOSMerge v2.0 would solve this problem,
but it hasn't. Is there a fix (rather than the work-around described
in TFM)? Rebooting the system many times a day is annoying to say
the least.

There are other bugs, but this particular one is a continuing pain
in the proverbial. Anu thoughts or suggestions would be most
welcome. 

-- 
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Mike McBain,	   	    ACSnet: mjm at foster.avid.oz
Avid Systems Pty Ltd,	    Tel: +61 3 534 2293         FAX: +61 3 534 0153
St Kilda, Australia 3182    UUCP: {hplabs,uunet}!munnari!foster.avid.oz!mjm
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