armhold@topaz.rutgers.edu (George Armhold) (01/03/89)
Does anyone know why sometimes when booting up, the system seems to
have some kind of problem with the disk drive? What I mean is when
loading Workbench, the drive knocks 3 or 4 times for every time that
it should knock only once. This causes it to take about 4-5 times longer to
boot up. Then disk activity is usually screwed up for the entire
session- it's especially evident when opening disks from the
Workbench ("gronk gronk gronk gronk etc..." instead of "gronk gronk
- window's open"). At first I thought this was due my not using disk
labels that cover the seam on the top of the disk (some disks seem to
open a little bit at the top seam, the labels hold it closed), but now
sometimes disks WITH labels have this problem. This problem only
happens every once in a while- sometimes rebooting kills the problem,
sometimes not. I thought I had licked the problem until I tried using
"Better Dead than Alien" (QuickNibble won't copy it so I have to use
my original:-( ) This original came with one of those labels that only
covers the front of the disk- it doesn't cover the seam. I was
too angry to play the game after waiting forever to load it (gronk
gronk gronk etc...) so I loaded up workbench- and it too had the
problem(my workbench DOES have a good label on it.) Only after 3
reboots did it stop. If it's really the label thats causing the
problem, can anybody tell me why? Has anyone else had this problem???
-GEA
PS: Better Dead than Alien has always worked fine for me until today.jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) (01/04/89)
In article <Jan.2.16.31.07.1989.13736@topaz.rutgers.edu> armhold@topaz.rutgers.edu (George Armhold) writes: >Does anyone know why sometimes when booting up, the system seems to >have some kind of problem with the disk drive? What I mean is when >loading Workbench, the drive knocks 3 or 4 times for every time that >it should knock only once. This causes it to take about 4-5 times longer to >boot up. Then disk activity is usually screwed up for the entire >session- it's especially evident when opening disks from the >Workbench ("gronk gronk gronk gronk etc..." instead of "gronk gronk >- window's open"). I suspect marginal disks, or disks which have some 'float'. It sounds like it's retrying every read. Buy a few "good" disks (non-supercheap), and see if it happens to them. Try removing and reinserting the disk (if it's a centering problem). Also, it might be a dirty or misaligned drive. When was the last time you cleaned your heads? Last idea (but would only affect startup): the drive may be validating, which will cause disk thrash. If you ^D out immediately, and the drive continues running (after giving you the prompt) then it's validating. Make sure there is at least 1 free block on the drive (and write-enabled) or it won't write out the new root/bitmap. -- Randell Jesup, Commodore Engineering {uunet|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!jesup