akc@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Bruce Cox) (10/01/88)
Has anyone else experienced this problem? I own one of the platinum 3.5 drives. It's approximately one year old and the ejection motor that pops the disk out has conked out on me. It's not the front switch because the software control also fails to eject the disk. I know of at least 3 other platinum drives in this area that this has also happened to. I took the drive into my local dealer and all he said he could do was to replace the entire inside of the drive for $200. That didn't settle well with me since the drive works perfectly except for ejecting disks. How difficult would it be to just replace the ejection motor? _________________________________________________________________________ Bruce Cox UUCP: mentor.cc.purdue.edu!akc BITNET: clone@purccvm.bitnet
rfischer@skat.usc.edu (Roger Fischer) (10/02/88)
Sorry to let you know, but replacing the entire drive is all that you will ever get no matter where you go and what the problem is. 200 is a little steep though, A more standard price would be about 100 for the drive and about 60 for the labor. The reason for this is that apple won't sell parts for the drives, they just exchange the entire sony drive. This is actually cheaper than having the part on the drive replaced, because then the labor costs would go through the roof. If you look around, you might find a non-authorized dealer who would just replace the motor for less, but you should be weary of the quality of work, or his warranty policy. You'll find that items like drives and keyboards are (usually) cheaper to replace than fix, since the cost of labor is high. If you know what you are doing, it is much cheaper to do the work yourself. On the other hand, if you don't know what you are doing, and you screw up the part you are working on, the Service Outlet won't be able to exchange the part with Apple, and you will have to pay the full price instead of the exchange price. Roger rfischer@skat.usc.edu
halp@TCGOULD.TN.CORNELL.EDU ("Bruce P. Halpern") (10/02/88)
Don't lay out $200 for a new platinum Apple 3.5 800K external drive. The Cutting Edge 800K external drive can be bought for about $179 from several vendors. It should work o.k with //gs and PC Transporter (it's marketed for Mac thru SE). It *WON'T** work with a //e or //c (and I suppose not with a //c+, but perhaps . . . . Interesting question. Is the appropriate external 3.5 drive for a //c+ the Unidisk 3.5 or the platinum Apple 3.5?) One vendor is MacWarehouse, at 1-800-255-6227. Their i.d. number for the drive is DRI 0042. Their number works 0800-2300, M-F; 0800-2000, S (Eastern Time [is there really any other?]. ****DISCLAMER: My comments, etc., are my own shakey opinions ******** | Bruce P. Halpern Psychology & Neurobiology & Behavior Cornell Ithaca | | INTERNET:halp@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu BITNET:D57J@CORNELLA D57J@CRNLVAX5| | UUCP:{vax135,rochester,decvax}!cornell!batcomputer!halp | | PHONE: 607-255-6433 Uris Hall, Cornell U., Ithaca, NY 14853-7601 |
kamath@reed.UUCP (Sean Kamath) (10/06/88)
In article <12516@oberon.USC.EDU> rfischer@skat.usc.edu (Roger Fischer) writes: >Sorry to let you know, but replacing the entire drive is all that you will >ever get no matter where you go and what the problem is. 200 is a little >steep though, A more standard price would be about 100 for the drive and >about 60 for the labor. >Roger >rfischer@skat.usc.edu Ah, yes, it's sad but true. Another little nugget of information to sprout forth from my glowing fingertips: Pro-Owned Electronics specializes in Apple parts. Interrestingly enough, they sell an internal 800K drive for $215. Two pages back (roughly), another company is selling external mac disk drives (800K) for $175. . . So, save yourself $35 and get a free cable and case! In case anyone out there is wondering, the drive mech's for all 800K drives sold by apple are basically the same. This includes the 800K mac, Unidisk and Apple 3.5 incher. A small amount of recabling in necessary for the unidisk, since it has a 6502 in the drive itself. In any case, $200 for a repair is rediculous. You *really* can do this yourself. It is just about the simplest swap there is. *mucH* easier than swapping the 5.25 inch disks. Sean Kamath -- UUCP: {decvax allegra ucbcad ucbvax hplabs ihnp4}!tektronix!reed!kamath CSNET: reed!kamath@Tektronix.CSNET || BITNET: kamath@reed.BITNET ARPA: kamath%reed.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu US Snail: 3934 SE Boise, Portland, OR 97202-3126 (I hate 4 line .sigs!)
c60c-3aw@web-3d.berkeley.edu (Andy McFadden) (10/07/88)
If you do get a clone 3.5 drive, MAKE SURE it plugs into the IWM port, not onto a card. Otherwise you will lose compatiblity with a lot of things. Take it from someone who knows... You should also examine such things as speed (can I do a GS/OS 2:1 interleave), etc. Make sure it does everything it should. Note that this is somewhat less important for a second drive, which would likely be used for storing data. Keith: Are these sources C, Assembler, Pascal, GS BASIC, or what? The logical place to put them is comp.binaries.apple2, but I'm not sure if everyone can reach that. And while I'm here: there is a Usenet tradition to change the "Followup-To:" line in the message header to "alt.flame" or "poster" when posting flames. Go back to your corners and come out E-mailing. -- fadden@zen.berkeley.edu [crashed] c60c-3aw@widow.berkeley.edu (Andy McFadden)
keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) (10/08/88)
In article <15099@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> c60c-3aw@web-3d.berkeley.edu (Andy McFadden) writes: >Keith: Are these sources C, Assembler, Pascal, GS BASIC, or what? The logical >place to put them is comp.binaries.apple2, but I'm not sure if everyone can >reach that. > Andy, There are 13 programs altogether. Of them, 2 are in C: a shell program, and a text file lister that serves as a utility and a sample of the Print Manager. All the rest are in assembly. This is for a several reasons: 1) the assember is *MUCH* faster than the C compiler; 2) the code generated by the C compiler is not very compact; 3) some of the programs would be more difficult or impossible to do in other languages (like custom windows in GS BASIC); 4) Apple only has an assember and a C - we couldn't do them in Pascal without endorsing a 3rd party product - so that leaves C and assembly; 5) Neither Jim or I particularly like C, and we were only 2 programmers on this project. Since I am distributing source code, I was looking for comp.sources.apple, but if there isn't one, I was going to post to comp.binaries.apple. I'll let you all know what I do as soon as I do it. Keith Rollin UUCP: amdahl\ Developer Technical Support pyramid!sun !apple!keith Apple Computer decwrl/ BITNET: keith%apple.com@relay.cs.net "You can do what you want to me, but leave my computer alone!"
halp@TCGOULD.TN.CORNELL.EDU ("Bruce P. Halpern") (10/12/88)
Daisy-chaining 3.5 drives. The Apple Unidisk 3.5 (for //c, //c+, and //e) and the Apple 3.5 Drive (for //gs and PC Transporter) ****DO***** have a daisy-chain port in the back. On a //gs, the daisy-chained drive can be another 3.5 drive, a Unidisk 3.5, an Apple 5.25 drive, or a Unidisk or DuoDisk (5.25). A total of 4 drives can be daisy-chained on a //gs [3.5 drives are not daisy-chained on a Macintosh]. Thus, while the Cutting Edge 3.5 drive at $175 will save about $150 off Apple list, it greatly limits drive flexibility for the //gs owner [no problem for the Mac owner]. ****DISCLAMER: My comments, etc., are my own shakey opinions ******** | Bruce P. Halpern Psychology & Neurobiology & Behavior Cornell Ithaca | | INTERNET:halp@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu BITNET:D57J@CORNELLA D57J@CRNLVAX5| | UUCP:{vax135,rochester,decvax}!cornell!batcomputer!halp | | PHONE: 607-255-6433 Uris Hall, Cornell U., Ithaca, NY 14853-7601 |
mw22+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Alan Wertheim) (10/14/88)
Can the Cutting Edge drive be used on a //c? Michael Wertheim Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA Arpa: mw22@andrew.cmu.edu Bitnet: mw22%andrew@cmccvb
dougm@nucleus.UUCP (Doug McIntyre) (10/20/88)
Has any one at apple considered making a big* prodos file system? This would be using gs/os limits on sizes and so forth. for example, using the long data size for block numbers for an access size of the drive at 4GB, and having filetype a word long, having longer file names, and upper/lower case, more rubust symbols in file names, and so forth. I notice that there isn't any fst id number that corresponds to future expansion of prodos, but you probably could take something like dos 3.1 off the list of fst id numbers (after all I doubt that a dos 3.1 fst is going to be written.) This could be done fairly rapidly, as you have at least 90% - 95% of the prodos file system already completed, and you would just have to expand directory entries, and so forth. I don't have many objections to the prodos fs besides the ones I suggested to change above.. like gs/os a lot though..