CMDNESPG@UIAMVS.BITNET ("Steven E. Nelson") (02/22/88)
Does anyone have any experience or suggestions for using Central
Point's universal disk controller with Apple-Mac 400K disk drives?
I'm having a great deal of trouble. I've tried 3 controller boards,
and over a dozen different drives. Chinon 800k and Mac 800 external
drives work fine, 400k drives cause many write errors and trashed
blocks under Prodos (v1.4). All 400k drives seem to read Ok, but
a disk copy (using copyiiplus v7.4) gives 1 or more write errors
(always at seemingly random blocks) and ususally cause even more
verify errors than write errors. I noticed a tendency of most drives
to cause a verify error in block 9 after formatting, and 3 or 4 drives
couldn't write to block 6 and caused a format failure because it
couldn't finish writing the vtoc blocks. All 400k drives work fine
on a MacSE, but I don't have any program to test them on a Mac per se.
I called the company, but couldn't get a definite answer. "We
don't recommend 400k drives. Get a 800k drive." was the consistent
response. One man said he personally had not had any problems in
house with 400k drives - but he also said 400k drives could not
reliably read 400k disks created on Mac or GS drives. He also said I
shouldn't use disk copy or file copy programs with a 400k drive -
only load and save files from within Appleworks, etc. ProDOS has
random errors with copying! BAH HUMBUG!, thought I!!! ProDOS would
have the same errors writing from Appleworks as from any copy program!
Anyway, pressing him for an answer as to whether I should keep testing
drives, he emphasized "We don't recommend 400k drives".
Now, I have access to a pool of used 400k drives (cheap, $60 @).
Should I keep trying, or give up?
Has anyone gotten 400k drives to work with a UDC?
Thanks for any insights.
Steven E. Nelson / Univ. of Iowa
BITNET: CMDNESPG@UIAMVSkreme@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Name? I have no name. My only name is Kreme.) (02/22/88)
In article <8802212228.aa25943@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA> CMDNESPG@UIAMVS.BITNET ("Steven E. Nelson") writes: >Does anyone have any experience or suggestions for using Central >Point's universal disk controller with Apple-Mac 400K disk drives? > >I'm having a great deal of trouble. I've tried 3 controller boards, >and over a dozen different drives. Chinon 800k and Mac 800 external >drives work fine, 400k drives cause many write errors and trashed >blocks under Prodos (v1.4). All 400k drives seem to read Ok, but >a disk copy (using copyiiplus v7.4) gives 1 or more write errors ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Try using V8.0 or higher. If this fails, call CPS and ask them about it. They will probably be familiar with the problem. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |This is a frace -- I really don't know what I'm talking about! ;-) | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ucscc!ucscb!kreme |There are places I'll remember, | |ARPA: kreme@ucscb.ucsc.edu |All my life, though some have changed, | |BITNET: kreme@ucscb@ucscc.BITNET |Some forever, not for better | |Kreme Korp Computers (an imaginary |Some are gone, and some remain... | | company created by me, for me) | PM/JL | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |These views are not those of my school, my country, my employer, or me ;-) | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------