K538915@CZHRZU1A.BITNET (03/02/88)
THIS IS NOT A RUMOUR!
It has been brought to my attention that Atari has been manufacturing
ST's with a most serious flaw over the last few months (time span is not
exactlly known). The problem is that some of the drives (Chinon) do not
reckonize a change is the write protect status properly (or at least
do not generate the required signal correctly). This means naturally
that the OS doesn't know when a disk has been changed and will happily
right old disk info to the new disk, which will naturally ruin the contents
of the disk.
The problem seems to effect the whole ST range (Mega and 1040), not all
are bad, but even Atari doesn't seem to know exactly the extent of
the problem.
To see if your ST has the problem, do the following:
a) get two NOT write protected disks
b) insert disk and open window
c) swap disks and press the Escape key
repeat c) a few times, if your ST always reads from disk each time
you press Escape, you don't have the problem otherwise:
DON'T USE YOUR ST ANYMORE!
and get the drive swapped!
(If you have a harddisk, you can naturally still use your computer.)
Isn't it nice how Atari alerted us about this problem as soon as they
noticed it :-/.
Simon Poole
BITNET: K538915@CZHRZU1A
UUCP: ...mcvax!cernvax!forty2!poole
PS: Atari Switzerland was trying to cover this up: Bad luck boys!gert@nikhefh.hep.nl (Gert Poletiek) (03/02/88)
In article <8803011908.AA29447@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> K538915@CZHRZU1A.BITNET writes: >THIS IS NOT A RUMOUR! > >It has been brought to my attention that Atari has been manufacturing >ST's with a most serious flaw over the last few months (time span is not >exactlly known). The problem is that some of the drives (Chinon) do not >reckonize a change is the write protect status properly (or at least >do not generate the required signal correctly). This means naturally [...] >PS: Atari Switzerland was trying to cover this up: Bad luck boys! This is TRUE, Atari Benelux (Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg) has loads of replacement drives in stock. If you're dealer sold you an ST in the last couple of weeks you can get a free replacement. However, the dealer has to replace the drive himself. Gert Poletiek NIKHEF-H, Dutch National Institute for Nuclear and High Energy Physics Kruislaan 409, P.O.Box 41882, 1009 DB Amsterdam, The Netherlands UUCP: {decvax,cernvax,unido,seismo}!mcvax!nikhefh!gert bitnet: nikhefh!gert@mcvax.bitnet, U00025@hasara5.bitnet