denbeste@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) (07/25/87)
OK, here is a bizarre one. I have a standard 512K Amiga and an expansion
drive. The external drive seems to work fine, except for one thing:
Certain physical disks cannot be written with it. When I try, it gives me the
requestor box saying "Disk is write protected". It makes no difference which
position the protection slide is in.
Visual inspection shows no difference between the disks that work and those
that don't - but the ones that don't work, consistently don't work. There is
no obvious gap for which light to pass through the write-protect hole when
the slide is in the write-enable position.
About one disk in five won't work.
Oh, I might mention that the disks that fail work perfectly in the built-in
drive. (DAMN but it is nice having the disks be named instead of positioned -
when I run into this I just swap drives and continue as if nothing had
happened.)
Anyone got any answers for me? I tried getting it repaired once, and it
cost me $75 to get told that there wasn't anything wrong. Of course, I
hadn't characterized it to this extent then. If the recommendation is
that I take it in for repair again, I'll make sure to take one of the
disks that doesn't work with me. However, I'd rather not shell out that
much money unless there is no other choice.
--
Steven C. Den Beste
Bolt Beranek & Newman, Cambridge MA
denbeste@bbn.com (ARPA or CSNET)bryce@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Bryce Nesbitt) (07/25/87)
In article <468@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM> you write: > >OK, here is a bizarre one. I have a standard 512K Amiga and an expansion >drive. The external drive seems to work fine, except for one thing: > >Certain physical disks cannot be written with it. When I try, it gives me the >requestor box saying "Disk is write protected". It makes no difference which >position the protection slide is in. [The disks work ok on the internal >drive] I had the same problem. The little mechanical arm was bent and was not pushed down far enough to trip the sensor. Some tape/paper to build up a bulge on your disks near the write protect hole would help in the short term. For the long term you will need some simple mechanical work on your drives, easiest might be some epoxy to build up the tip of the trip arm. >...no obvious gap for which light to pass through the write-protect hole when >the slide is in the write-enable position. Some drives have a sensor that directly passes light, some have a mechanical arm that then leads to the actual sensor. (probably an optical sensor in either case) ----------------------------- |\ /| . Ack! (NAK, EOT, SOH) {o O} . ( " ) bryce@cogsci.berkeley.EDU -or- ucbvax!cogsci!bryce U "Success leads to stagnation; stagnation leads to failure."
fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) (07/27/87)
In article <468@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM>, denbeste@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) writes: > > Certain physical disks cannot be written with it. When I try, it gives me the > requestor box saying "Disk is write protected". It makes no difference which > position the protection slide is in. When I bought my Amiga about a year ago the dealer advised me that the newer disk drives used a pin to test the write-protect slide. He said some disks have too thin a slide. The pin drops too far and gives a false reading. It sounds unlikely, but your problem might be related to that. --Fabbian Dufoe 350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South St. Petersburg, Florida 33705 813-823-2350 UUCP: ...seismo!akgua!usfvax2!jc3b21!fgd3
eric@hippo.UUCP (Eric Bergan) (07/28/87)
In article <468@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM>, denbeste@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) writes: > > Certain physical disks cannot be written with it. When I try, it gives me the > requestor box saying "Disk is write protected". It makes no difference which > position the protection slide is in. I had this problem with my external drive. Mine seemed to be temperature sensitive - if the drive got warm (sitting in the sun, for instance), than I would start getting errors. I took the drive apart, and the sense arm for the write protect looks like it might warp and cause the problem. I have taken pains to make sure the drive stays out of sunlight, and the problem doesn't seem to be re-occuring. -- eric ...!ptsfa!hippo!eric