Date: Tue, 21 Jun 94 10:13:34 -0400
From: dj AT ctron DOT com (DJ Delorie)
To: morphine AT whatever DOT cs DOT jhu DOT edu
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: Catching disk errors

> 	I want my programs to be able to successfully catch I/O errors with a 
> floppy disk.  This is not a problem if the disk is full, for instance, but if
> there is actually no disk in the drive then I get the DOS "Abort, Retry, Fail"
> message repeatedly on my screen.  What's the easiest way to beat DOS to it and
> have MY program be able to handle a no-disk situation?

Use BIOS calls to try to read the first sector.  You'll get an error
return instead of the dos message.