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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

1147.0. "1040 Disk Woes---Help!!!" by RGB::ROST (I believe she's a dope fiend) Fri Jun 21 1991 12:12

    I've been having some disk drive problems with my 1040ST.  I keep
    wondering if it's the drive itself, which is a Teac that the previous
    owner installed when the factory drive died, or what.
    
    Here's the symptoms:
    
    I have three disk formatting programs I use.  The one with the ST
    desktop works OK 100% of the time, but it's slow.  I have a ramdisk
    called Mdisk that includes a "format and save" option but when I try to
    format as 9 sectors, I get lots of bad track errors.  10 and 11 sectors
    format fine, though.  I also have a program called Disk Manager which
    has a formatter as one of its features.  This *was* working fine when I
    was using Sony floppies.  I went to a box of BASF floppies, and
    although the program says the disk is formatted, I get lots of "unable
    to read disk" failures with the BASF floppies; reformatting using the
    desktop takes care of the problem.
    
    In addition, about every two months or so, I get a situation where the
    machine will not read floppies.  Every disk comes up looking blank (0
    bytes used) and autoboot disks don't boot, I get the default desktop
    instead.  In the past, I've opened up the ST, reseated all the chips
    and reconnected the drive.  This lasts me another few months.  It's a
    royal pain in the butt, especially when I'm in the midst of doing
    something important....guess how I felt when I looked into the disk
    holding my term paper last semester and found "0 bytes used".
    
    Anyone have any good ideas?  My guesses in order of increasing $$:
    
    1.  Just live with formatting from the desktop and having to reseat
    everything every few months.
    
    2.  Replace the disk drive with another unit (approx $50-100).
    
    3.  Get a new machine  (approx $500 for a new 1040STE) 
    
    4.  Shoot the thing and buy an IBM clone  8^)  8^)  8^)
    
    						Brian

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
1147.1	Just a thought.	AD::BARBER	Brought to you by the MFL, the mother fu...no, the NFL, the nati	`Fri Jun 21 1991 12:41`	4
	It wouldn't be a problem with improper disk speed would it?? (improper RPM's, should be 300 I think).. Andrew
1147.2	drive hassles	AIDEV::HUTCHINSON	Hutch	`Fri Jun 21 1991 15:24`	27
	Brian, Like Andrew suggested in .1, you should check your floppy drive speed with one of many PD utilities out there. It should be in the neighborhood of 300 RPM +/- 5 RPM. If it's a great deal off, that could be the cause of some of your problems, but not all. If drive speed is OK, I doubt seriously if your floppy drive is the problem. If you don't like the slower/less capacity of desktop 9 sector formats, I'd recommend you go with Dave Small's Twister format. It's free, very reliable, and gives you 807K and faster read/writes to boot. I've got an old 1Mb 520ST which exhibits the same behavior. Every month or so I have to do the old Atari quick fix on it... pick up the machine and drop it about 6 inches 2 or 3 times. This is the lazy alternative to opening the hood and reseating the chips but accomplishes the same thing. The problem is caused by oxidation in the socketed chips, most notably the MMU. You can buy some electrical contact enhancer at any parts supplier, pull all your chips, treat 'em and reseat 'em and it should help some. If the problem persists, I think your best bet would be to dump the machine for whatever you can get for it and pick up a new 1040STe. These are now readily available from several vendors for UNDER $400 (not $500). If you still have the old TOS 1.0 in your 1040, it makes it an even better deal as you will notice considerable speed improvements in all disk accesses plus conveniences. Hutch
1147.3		MPGS::RADOFF		`Fri Jun 21 1991 16:43`	19
	Check the speed, number one thing to do and adjust. Clean the heads. Floppy disk drive heads get dirty leading to transient operation that can come and go as any build up is knocked off the head. Go to Radio Shack and get a 3 1/2" floppy cleaning diskette. In the worst case, it may be necessary to clean the heads with a cotton swab and 91% Isopropyl alcohol (available at most pharmacies.) This operation is a little delicate as it requires getting directly at the heads. Last thing to look for is a flaky interconnect. Open up the Atari, pull off the floppy connector, gently wipe each of the contact pins with a pencil eraser. If none of the above works, junk it. If it's a Teac drive, this product is very resilient and has an excellent reliability record. One final thing, junk diskettes give junk performance. I am not suggesting you use A-number 1 gold diskettes, but cheap diskettes tend to lead to flaky performance that can foul the head surface and/or just plain work poorly. Steve
1147.4	Experience from two flakey floppy repairs	PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ	Jeffrey A. Lomicka	`Mon Jun 24 1991 16:28`	9
	I've fixed two machines with flakey floppy disk problems. In both cases, the fix was to replace the DMA controller chip. It's socketed, and can be easily obtained from BEST electronics or perhaps Toad Computers. It's about $30.00 (US). Replacing drives did no good. Replacing the Western Digital chip did no good. Cleaning and reseating chips did some marginal improvement, usually not long lasting. Replacing the DMA controller made it solid as a rock.
1147.5	writing to floppy causes corruption	MARVIN::FORSTER		`Wed Jul 03 1991 08:37`	12
	On the subject of disk errors - I've got two external floppy drives hooked up to my 520. The second, double-sided drive has always worked fine. The single-sided, Atari drive however seems to have some problems corrupting disks. The error rate is acceptable however as long as I don't write to this drive. I guess this has to be a drive rather than controller chip problem. Any ideas on what the problem might be ? (I keep intending to junk the drive and get a replacement, but after reading these notes I want to make sure it's a drive problem and not the controller). Dave.
1147.6		SVCRUS::ADAMS	beam me up	`Tue Jul 23 1991 17:47`	19
	Here is something to consider. A friend of mine has been having a lot of disk problems lately and was considering replacing his drive which was replaced less than a year ago. He had disks work for a while and then just stop booting reading etc. It turned out that he had picked up a virus somewhere along the line and infected some of his most used disks (utility disks). He had a virus killer on one disk but that had also been infected. After getting another vkiller and curing his disks his machine began acting civilized again. My internal drive went bad on me a few months ago. It would fail solidly until it warmed up and then it would work fine. I finally got fed up and replaced it with a teac that I bought at a pc show for $53.00. It was a 1.44 drive but works fine and formats out to 85 tracks. It is also very quiet. In fact sometimes I have to put my ear close to it to see if it is really working. There is a 720k standard drive available also for $30.00. Only one thing to watch when swapping the drive, the internal drive cable has to be twisted over and there is not much slack so it ends up barely reaching. So far everything I have works fine with it. Bob