I was very interested in Ross Little's account of how he rescued his disk in EUG #23. I have had some similar problems.

I was modifying a program in one of the directories of a rather full DS disk when I got the "Broken directory" message. Why this happened, I don't know. Perhaps it was my fumble fingers at the keyboard? Fortunately, I could access all the other directories and only got it when trying to get my program.

I tried the Disksearch program Ross used to find the directory (and my programs!) only to discover they were on side 2 and the program only covered side 1. The program was easily modified though by altering the value in the FOR/NEXT loop from &4FF to &9FF. This found the disk addresses of my programs and the directory toward the end of side 2.

I then tried to recover them using the recovery program. When I entered the disk addresses, I could not get them as I got the "Bad Program" response when I altered PAGE to &2000 where the program should be. Apparently, the program does not seem to accept addresses above &4FF. I then though of the program Examine in Electron User June 1989. This will accept all disk addresses and it is easy to alter the number of sectors read although only the first sector is displayed. The program is then loaded to &3000 and can then be recovered by altering PAGE to &3000.

Having recovered my programs, I then tried to find out what exactly was wrong with the directory. I tried clearing it but this had no effect. On looking at the root directory, I found that it seemed this was badly corrupted so I had to set up another disk with necessary directories and transfer all the programs from the faulty disk then add the recovered programs. After this, all was well.

On another DS disk, I found that I had a "Disk fault 48" in one of my files and as usual I had no backup. I was able to read the other sectors and, after some adjustment, as it is necessary to SAVE from the beginning of a line or for the beginning part to set TOP at the end of a line, I was able to recover most of the file. This was one of six files which are used as overlays to a main program as is used in the Circuit program (EUG #23). It draws a plan of my little flat and I was able to add the gaps in the file to complete it.

Richard Dimond, EUG #24