TOS 'bugs', what is really a bug

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I got in last months some e-mails where people talking about fixing some 'TOS bugs' - Folder100 was mentioned couple times.

But it is not actually bug. It is just that there is some RAM space provided by default for buffering disk directories, and it is not large - to leave more space for user SW.

And that is enough for 99,9% of usage, or I would say for normal usage. For instance I never experienced that message: "OUT OF INTERNAL MEMORY:K
*** USE FOLDR100.PRG TO GET MORE." . Well, I did, but only when I wanted it - when tested my code for adding more space. Then I created lot of subdirectories, but normally I don't go under level 4.

So, I think that using SW like FOLDR100 is OK - activate it when really need extra space, otherwise TOS does it's job well.

 

What is closer to be called bug is IKBD chip year handling in TOS. That chip stores year as 2 BCD bytes, so range is 00-99 - 100 years. Start year for TOS date handling is 1980 . And what they done ? They writing 80 for start year in IKBD chip, and add to it 1900 when displaying. The result is that it works only until 1999, and need for some year 2K patches, fixes. It just should start with 0, and adding 1980 to it. Then it works until year 2079 - hmm... I would like to see some ST still working then But we are at the end of another 20 years period just now. This is something what can be called a bug, but it is not that something works really bad, it just has some unnecessary limitations.

 

In improved TOS versions I fixed only 1 real bug. And that is displaying of large file sizes in Desktop, when is set in txt mode. In TOS 1.04 & 1.62 there will be crash when file size is over 99999999 bytes - so if file is 100 MB (decimal MB) or more . If it is over 9999999 displaying will be without space, not well formatted. Surely such long files were not common in 198x , but should be prepared for them, instead crash.

 

In early TOS versions there may be more real bugs, but I really don't care about them. Remembering that there are some in 2.06 - something about AES window scroll bar. but did not experience it for really long time.

Edited March 12, 2019 by ParanoidLittleMan

[vattari]

In early TOS versions there may be more real bugs, but I really don't care about them. Remembering that there are some in 2.06 - something about AES window scroll bar. but did not experience it for really long time.

Did the “Super TOS 2.06” version that was unofficially released address this bug?

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Did the “Super TOS 2.06” version that was unofficially released address this bug?

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Not sure about it. And I think that I made some fix for it, about 26 years ago, but couldn'f find it so far. Must be on some of my early CD-s . Will look more ..