LC.YRS@forsythe.stanford.edu (Richard Stanton) (11/18/89)
I've just downloaded a few auto head parking routines from SIMTEL - they seemed like a good idea after watching my computer dancing around on my desk during the last earthquake. These are meant to park the heads after a period of no use. I tried one of them, which tried to find the last track on my disk, but seemed unable to do so. The heads kept whirring, and clicking and I finally rebooted in terror. The second program seemed to work. After a minurte there was a little noise as the heads moved. HOwever, when I next tried to use the disk, there was no sound of the heads moving much to get back into position. My disk is a Seagate ST251, formatted MFM, and partitioned into a 32 and a 10 Mb drive. The entry in the BIOS setup table understates the number of tracks on the disk, as there is not a comparable entry in the available table (I have an Epson Equity II+). Does anyone know how these programs decide where to park the heads, as I'd like to be sure it's not just parking them somewhere in the middle of drive D:, which it would do if it read the BIOS information. Thanks Richard Stanton pstanton@gsb-what.stanford.edu