[comp.sys.atari.st] Spinning floppy problem

ralph@lasso.UUCP (Ralph P. Sobek) (01/13/88)

Awhile back in Info-Atari16 Digest v. 87, n. 392 Warner Young (formerly
c9c-eh@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU) described his problem of having his floppy keep
spinning when he boots his hard disk.

I recently have found out that I have the same problem!  I have a 1040 ST with
an SH204 hard drive.  At cold boot or warm boot, the floppy motor starts
spinning immediately!  Then the floppy light comes on when the ST checks to 
see if a floppy is there!  The light goes off and the ST continues by booting 
from the hard disk (I use AHDI.PRG), but the floppy motor keeps spinning.

Does anybody else have the same problem, or has found a solution?  I have
only recognized the problem when turning off my hard disk at night to work
quietly -- with it on, one doesn't hear the floppy motor at all!  I have
a kludge whereby I access the floppy from desktop (with a floppy in the
drive) and that turns off the continually spinning motor.  Why doesn't
the boot turn off the motor?  Is there a signal getting lost?  Any help
would be appreciated.

While I'm on the subject of booting, are there any differences between
the hard disk boot programs that float around on the net?  I have AHDI.PRG.
I've seen posted HDB_V2.3.  Is it for another drive?

When a hard disk is installed, will an ST boot off of the floppy *only* if it
has a boot sector?  If so, how does one put a boot sector on a floppy?  I
have not managed, w/o kludges, to boot a floppy while having my hard disk on.

Thanks for any comments and help.

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