actor@percival.pdx.com (Clif Swinford) (07/12/87)
Does anyone know if using odd formats could lead to hardware problems?
Here's why I ask: last week I tried using a disk I'd formatted to 83 tracks,
10 sectors per track, using maximum step rate. I put Neochrome on it, then
tried to run it. It crashed in a matter of seconds. Ever since then, low
resolution programs crash in seconds and medium-res ones in from minutes to
hours (Uniterm has crashed three times while I was entering this). Using the
Atari diagnostic cartridge at the local service center, everything in the
machine now tests out as intermittently defective. Intermittently, but not
consistently. Swapping out every socketed chip in the machine has done no
good. Any suggestions?
BTW - my configuration is: older 520ST (made July '85) with standard RAM,
and a homebrew double-drive setup using the same Chinon drives used in the
1040ST. The drive isn't contributing to the problem; I've tried using other
drives with the same results.
--
Clif Swinford
..!tektronix!reed!percival!actor fnordpes@ux63.bath.ac.uk (Smee) (07/17/87)
3.5 inch drives are (by standard convention) only spec-ced to run up to 3ms step rate. Also, they are only specced to run up to 80 tracks. Most drives will manage 82, if you're lucky; and maybe half of them will manage 2ms steptimes. If you go beyond the specifications, you run the danger of garbaging the disk drive. (Which is YA reason why track 81/82 copy protection is a REAL BAD idea.) I'd say that 83 track/2ms step was really pushing your luck. Whether trashing a drive could then infect the rest of the machine would then depend, I suppose, mostly on what the drive does when it goes.