Subject: Re: $0802 Break, Help
Message-ID: <3730AA30.65871D0D@swbell.net>
From: Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>

johnny evans writes ...
> 
> I have only rescently, (within the last year), purchased a new PC.  Until
> then, my Laser 128 had sufficed very well.
> The other day I tried to boot my 128 up, and got this error message,
> ($0802).  Is there any way to repair this computer?
> I have a 20Mb Sider hard drive w/1Meg of ram on this computer.  It seems
> such a waste not to be able to retirve the useful
> information I have stored on the hard drive.
 ....


    "0802 Break" may not be so bad. It sounds less like an error message than a
crash into the monitor. Your computer wanted to execute machine instructions
near address $802 and hit a $00 (Break) instruction; so, it did a Break. One
place you might run into this sort of crash is during booting.

     The usual way to trouble shoot this sort of thing is to, first, simplify
the system. So, (with power OFF) pull off the Sider and any controller. If you
have some kind of sound module plugged in, pull it, too. Disconnect any
joystick, graphics pad, printer, ..., etc. (Joysticks sometimes develop shorts
which can screw up things. Sound modules may be triggering interrups at bad
times.)

     When you are down to a basic '128 with a monitor and a diskette drive, try
booting some known-good diskettes. If they boot and run correctly, then, turn
OFF power and plug in a joystick and try booting again.

     Following this process you may get to a 128 system minus any hard drive
which works correctly. (If not, try cleaning your disk drives, etc.. If there is
still a problem, you can always post a question here.)


     It may turn out that everything works fine until the Sider is added.

If just having the Sider plugged in screws up everything-- i.e. you can not boot
any diskette drive and 'nothing works right', you are, probably, looking at a
messed up cable or some sort of hardware malfunction in the Sider drive and/or
controller interfacing. An experienced Sider user would know a lot more about
problems to check for.

If, with the hard drive plugged in, you can boot from a diskette drive, then,
the thing to do is see whether or not you can access files and, if so, which
ones. If some stuff is okay and some isn't, you are probably looking at a
situation where directories and/or some files have been corrupted. This could
happen if you tried running a partially deprotected commercial game or some DOS
3.3 software which does direct Track/Sector writes to disk.

If, running a utility like Copy II Plus or Block Warden, you can reliably read
some blocks on the Sider and see stuff that looks like it is part of a file,
there's a pretty good chance that at least some of the files can be salvaged.

Rubywand