djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dick O'Connor) (06/01/89)
I've recently come across a problem here involving 360K diskettes that
can't be read by certain 1.2M drives, and I'm looking for further advice
on diagnosing and solving the problem.
Two of our field workers use XT-clone machines ("MX-10" models) with 360K
floppy disk drives. When they format and write to a 360K diskette, every
machine in our office can read the diskette (including Kaypro XT, Zenith
AT, AST XT and AT, and even my Zenith Z-100 MSDOS machine!). Every machine
except the two AT-clones belonging to their supervisors! The AT's in
question are AIC-286 machines, and I'm not sure of the make of disk drives
used in either clone at this point.
The most recent diskette sent in was a good case in how screwball this
problem is. Nothing we could do could get beyond Sector Not Found errors
on the first AIC machine. The second AIC machine gave similar messages from
DOS, but after flipping between DOS and XTree for awhile, finally was able
to read the directory in XTree! Both AIC machines seem capable of reading
1.2M diskettes OK.
I suspect something is out of alignment with the AIC 1.2M drives, but it
could conceivably be a controller problem as well. Is there any software
available that can test the specs of a floppy drive to see if we have
alignment problems? If responses are of general interest, I'll post a
summary. Thanks ever so much!
[Personally, I'd never recommend buying machines with names that sound like
missles or alphabet soup. But it wasn't my call...]
"Moby" Dick O'Connor
Washington Department of Fisheries
Olympia, Washington 98504
Internet Mail: djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu
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DISCLAIMER: I speak only for myself, not for the Department. Here, anyway!
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So long, and thanks *from* all the fish...boyne@hplvli.HP.COM (Art Boyne) (06/02/89)
djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dick O'Connor) writes: >I've recently come across a problem here involving 360K diskettes that >can't be read by certain 1.2M drives, and I'm looking for further advice >on diagnosing and solving the problem. > > (360K diskettes written by XT's can't be read by certain AT 1.2M drive) > >I suspect something is out of alignment with the AIC 1.2M drives, but it >could conceivably be a controller problem as well. When I bought my generic AT-clone, the 1.2 Mbyte drive couldn't read one of the MS-DOS install disks nor one disk in a 4-disk (360K) software pack I had previously purchased. I took the machine back to the dealer, where we found the same diskettes failed in a number of other machines yet to be shipped, but not in a machine in for repair. After trying several drive/controller permutations, we realized all the failures were machines with Western Digital controllers. We swapped my WD controller for a DTK (DTC?) controller. No problems since. BTW, the dealer told me that they were going away from WD because of this and other quality problems. Art Boyne, boyne@hplvla