Atari DOS Mystery

After reading "Atari Disk Speedup," ("Readers' Feedback," November, 1985), I POKEd off the verify function and created a new copy of DOS 2.5 with this enhancement. Shortly thereafter I noticed that any file I save to disk has angle brackets (<>) on either side of the filename in the DOS directory. Is this normal?

Mark A. Jossart

DOS 2.5 uses angle brackets around a filename to indicate that that file cannot be accessed by the old DOS 2.0. This is only important if you boot up with DOS 2.0 (a single-density DOS) and want to use a file on your DOS 2.5 (enhanced-density) disk.

It's possible that your POKE and the angle brackets are unrelated. If you have used more than 710 sectors of your disk, it is likely that you have no problem. There's a chance, however, that you have confused DOS. To be safe, you might try booting up with an unmodified copy of DOS 2.5 and using the WRITE DOS option on your problem disk. Of course, you should always perform any changes to DOS on a copy of the master disk, not the master disk itself.

If you have the SETUP.COM file which comes with DOS 2.5, load it from the DOS menu with the L option. This is the preferred way to make the change. Otherwise, here is the POKE:

POKE 1913,80

Use the WRITE DOS option to save the change.