grh@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (george.r.heuer) (01/06/90)
Here's a challenge for you hardware guru's out there... I recently convinced a fellow-employee that the computer he wanted for his 5-year old to do music and paint software was an Amiga 500. So he enthusiastically ran out the day before Christmas and bought an A500 at one of the local computer stores. The first disappointment occurred when he plugged it in Christmas day and the power supply was dead. But a trip to the dealer the next day yielded a new one and he set out to copy his workbench disks. Since he had a single drive, he used the duplicate option from the workbench and 50% of the time or more he got a read/write error whenever he tried to write on the destination disk. A trip back to the dealer was fruitless in that they were able to dup a disk and they sent him away. Anyway, back home again, the same thing started to happen. It seems that he can read disks OK but in the course of duplicating disks or trying to read disks that he succesfully wrote, he continues to get read/write errors. I thought his internal drive might be bad, so I loaned him my 1010 to see what happened, and he had exactly the same problems with my good 1010. Anyway, I have reasonable faith in this guy to believe that he's doing all the right things, but is having some sort of hardware problem. Now that we've eliminated the internal drive itself as a possible source of the problem, does anyone have an idea of what to suspect next? He talked to the dealer about checking this out, but they told him that he could take it to a local warranty place and wait a couple of weeks or that if they looked at it they'd charge him $60/hr if they didn't find anything wrong (This doesn't seem right to me, but that's an issue for another post). So he's pretty much dead in the water for at least 2 weeks. Anybody got any good ideas of what's going on? Randy Heuer att!cbnewsl!grh
valentin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Valentin Pepelea) (01/06/90)
In article <3512@cbnewsl.ATT.COM> grh@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (george.r.heuer) writes: > >Here's a challenge for you hardware guru's out there... > >...It seems that he can read disks OK but in the course >of duplicating disks or trying to read disks that he succesfully wrote, >he continues to get read/write errors. I thought his internal drive might >be bad, so I loaned him my 1010 to see what happened, and he had exactly >the same problems with my good 1010. He has faulty disks. Bring some of your faithful disks which you have had no trouble using during the last year and see how they fare. You might also try using his troublesome disk on your machine to make sure it is at fault. Valentin -- The Goddess of democracy? "The tyrants Name: Valentin Pepelea may distroy a statue, but they cannot Phone: (215) 431-9327 kill a god." UseNet: cbmvax!valentin@uunet.uu.net - Ancient Chinese Proverb Claimer: I not Commodore spokesman be
hargitai@acf5.NYU.EDU (01/09/90)
yeah, bad disk. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<cbm sucks when it comes to system disks. Firts of all I've gotten a pair of bad disks, not speaking of the kickstart 1.2 workbench 1.3 combination packaged with the hardware, something a five year old would probably not notice, but the two are not compatible. jh
iwood@uvicctr.UVic.CA.UUCP (Ian Wood) (01/09/90)
There is a problem with the DISKCOPY program on a whole whack of Workbench 1.3
disks that Commodore put out around Christmas. As well as the write errors,
the bad diskcopy will sometimes guru. Check the size of the DISKCOPY file.
If the file is 17380 bytes and the version is 1.3.1, it is the hooped version.
The guru problem only seems to come up from Workbench, not CLI.
A lot of the dealers around here didn't know about the problem. The guys at
Moebius Computer Systems in Victoria found it and phoned Commodore, who didn't
know (I think). But then Moebius is a real Amiga store, run by a bunch of
Amiga hackers who got into the retail business because they had a calling to
spread the word.....
Flame Retardent : I don't work for Moebius or get consideration for my
words here, etc, etc.
--
Ian Wood
Systems Operator UUCP : iwood@uvicctr.uvic.ca
University of Victoria BITNET : CCIAN@UVVM
C eh N eh D eh (It's a Sierra, Eric)
Disclaimer (noun) :
An heinously vulgar concept perpetuated by bureaucrats and lawyers.
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"And what if I should refuse to get this Loc-Nar?"
"You die. She dies. EEEVERBODY dies."
=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-= BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz (01/10/90)
In article <11590003@acf5.NYU.EDU>, hargitai@acf5.NYU.EDU writes: > yeah, bad disk. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<cbm sucks when it comes to system Can't resist this one. Guess I'll join in with everyone else. It's a shame you don't own an Amiga. > > disks. Firts of all I've gotten a pair of bad disks, not speaking > How do you know they were bad? > of the kickstart 1.2 workbench 1.3 combination packaged with the > It IS compatible, but there is no way you received them with your machine if you bought it new because: * The A1000 (which is the only model to require kickstart) was not manufactured after WB1.3 was released. > hardware, something a five year old would probably not notice, So either you are full of shit, OR your machine was not new. Let's assume the second: That hardly makes it any of Commodore's responsibility. > > but the two are not compatible. > > jh Regards Alan
grh@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (george.r.heuer) (01/11/90)
Due to the volume of responses I've received on the problems of my friend's flakey floppy drive wierdness, I'm posting this status report on the latest discoveries. Just to clear a couple of things up, we have tried a number of different blank disks and were able to use the original disks without problem, so we were convinced that the disks we were using were fine. We had also verified that the drive itself wasn't the problem since the same symptoms were observed on a known good 1010 attached to the A500. So we were suspicious that the problem was due to the floppy I/O hardware. Looks like that was wrong also though due to this weekend's discovery. Since my friend was never able to get the expansion memory board's clock to ever be recognized as existing on bootup, he removed the expansion board itself. When he did this, he found that he was then able to use the floppy drive just fine. When the board was installed, the system reported on workbench the full amount of memory, but something must not be cool with the expansion board or the connection from the A500 motherboard. In any case, he's trying to convince the dealer to give him another expansion board to see if that will work this time. Thanks to all for your replies. Randy Heuer att!pancho!grh