From: address@nospicedham.not.available   
      
   Bill,   
      
   I made a mistake in the below:   
      
   > Your assembler might be using the address of js2nd (and not its   
   > contents), which would mean that you are loading a sector over   
   > all the variables that follow (including the drive letter).   
      
   That js2nd is not used as an offset, but as an segment address.  That means   
   that your sector could be loaded in a segment somewhere above 0x7E00 (and   
   not trash the programs own variables).   
      
   It also explains why removing strings gets rid of the problem: the offset to   
   js2nd, and thus the segment address where your sector is actually loaded   
   gets to be lower.   
      
   In short: you are (probably) overwriting something beyond 0x7E00:0000 (and   
   assuming the data segment is placed after the code segment and DS: equals   
   CS: - above 0x9800:0000)   
      
   Regards,   
   Rudy Wieser   
      
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