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Conference 7.286::atarist

Title:Atari ST, TT, & Falcon
Notice:Please read note 1.0 and its replies before posting!
Moderator:FUNYET::ANDERSON
Created:Mon Apr 04 1988
Last Modified:Tue May 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1433
Total number of notes:10312

560.0. "Second drive problems" by MVSUPP::RYMER (Stealthy is Healthy) Mon Aug 07 1989 08:38

Hi,
 

A friend of mine appears to be having problems with a new Cumana 1 Mb
disk drive. It appears he he randomly getting corrupt data after writing
to the disk.



Thanks in advance,

	Andy.
************************************************************************ 

I have just noticed what I think are problems with my Cumana CSA 354 
1 Meg Disk Drive which I use as external drive B. It is only 3 months
old and is connected to a 'standard' 3 year-old 1040ST with 'old' TOS in
rom. The problem occurs intermittently in all screen resolutions. Can
anyone offer any help/advice which does not involve taking things to
bits. The symptoms are as follows:
 
1. Used as a drive for reading only the drive seems to be OK.
 
2. Random seek tests and speed tests seem to be OK. 
 
3. When used for writing to, single one-off file transfers seem to be OK.
   (eg. saving a WP document or program source very 20 minutes or so.) 
 
4. When used for writing to, involving disk to disk copying (Drive A: to
   Drive B:) sometimes the internal drive can't read the disk so
   produced and neither can any other Atari Disk Drive.  Sometimes the
   Cumana drive itself can not consistently read its own disk, ie.
   sometimes it refuses to read what it has written, ten minutes later,
   however, it may read it (after rebooting disk swapping etc).
 
5. When used for writing to, by copying (say) 30 files from drive A:
   some of the 30 files seem to get corrupted. The 'directory' entries
   look OK - files sizes OK, etc. but when you list an ASCII file (eg)
   you sometimes get garbage in the file instead on the real data.
   Program files are corrupted in a similiar way  and either they time
   bomb out or chunks of code don't work. Unlike 4. the Cumana drive is
   never able read the corruption.
 
6. I have used George Woodside's VKILLER to check for a virus and
   nothing's shown up. (I get the problem when I boot up from a wide
   range of disks.)
 
7. The same problem occurs on different media - cheap disks, SONY disks,
   Memorex disks, Verbatim, . . .
	  
8. I am not using lots of folders - no more than 10 in a session.
 
 
Has anyone got any ideas as to what may be going wrong - I always
thought  that TOS verified everything it wrote to a disk (an annoyance
to some people I know)?
 
Are there any nifty disk checking utilities out there? If so can someone
mail me a disk checker or even a byte-by-byte file comparision program
so that I can reverify files written on the Cumana?
 
Any help will be gratefully received. Sorry to have gone on at such
length but I felt I had to supply as much information on the problem as
possible.
 
(For all I know the drive may have been faulty at birth or got crunched
slightly coping with all that horrible copy protection which makes your
disk drive sound like a coffee grinder.)
 
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T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name
DateLines
560.1Take it backMOVIES::FORSTERMon Aug 07 1989 13:066
    Well this is probably not much help but... I had exactly the same
    problems with my original single-sided drive that came with my 520ST.
    I took it back to the shop who tested it (i.e. ran games from it for a
    week) and could find no problem but replaced it nonetheless. If the
    drive is still under guarantee then I'd recommend same course of
    action.
560.2heads are loose?BERN01::RUGGIEROTue Aug 08 1989 06:3013
>Note 560.1                    Second drive problems                       1 of 1
>MOVIES::FORSTER                                       6 lines   7-AUG-1989 09:06
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                               -< Take it back >-

Seems to be a good idea.

It looks like your drives head is deadjusted. This means that other drives
cannot follow the magnetic tracks written by the cumana. Sometimes the cumana
cannot even follow them itself. --> drive is not only deadjusted but the heads 
are loose, so the deadjustment varies.

---markus---