peterb@dsiramd.nz (Peter Burgess) (04/26/88)
Below is a description of some problems we have had with our macs, if anyone has had similar experiences or can answer some of the questions raised then I would appreciate it if they could send me a mail. I will summarize if I get many replies. We purchased 2 Mac SEs, both suffered hard disk failures. The first mac I tried had a bad hard disk! The Apple HD Setup program reported that no hard drive could be found. This mac was sent to our local agents for service. The second mac worked fine for a couple of weeks but then the hard disk went bad and had to be re-initialized. This seemed to cure the problem. A few weeks after that however the disk developed a hard fault. More and more disk errors occured and eventually I decided to try re-initializing. The HD Setup program reported that the drive had a hardware fault and could not be initialized. Meanwhile the repair shop had tried replacing the hard drive in our first mac but with no success. They then tried replacing both the drive and the controller card. This seemed to work and we picked up the mac (just in time to replace our other one!) Much to my amazement this failed the very next day (hard disk fault again). We are currently still waiting for both of them to be fixed as there seems to be a shortage of spare parts. Our SEs are normally situated in a terminal room and used by scientific staff, but are sometimes borrowed for use at home. We are now wondering whether the SEs are more fragile than we understood. We believed it was safe to transport them with reasonable care (in Mac padded carry bags), and that the disks are auto-parking on power down. (That is what we were told by one `expert', although another said that the Shut Down command does this.) I cannot find anything in the manual which suggests the latter statement. The description on page 177 does not say that shut down parks the hard disk. It merely states that: "It's a good idea to choose Shut Down before you turn off the Macintosh SE. That way, the system has a chance to close files properly and make sure everything is in place on your disks." Most of the time a Shut Down has been performed before power down, but there have been occasions when it hasn't, because I was sure that no disk activity was occuring. Are these likely to be just random failures or has anyone similar (un-)reliability experience with SEs, possible explanations or advice? Peter Burgess, Applied Mathematics Division, New Zealand Govt. Dept. of Scientific and Industrial Research. INTERNET: peterb@dsiramd.dsir.govt.nz UUCP: ...!uunet!vuwcomp!dsiramd.nz!peterb ACSNET: peterb@dsiramd.nz
rickd@hcx1.SSD.HARRIS.COM (05/02/88)
My Mac SE with hard disk has been remarkably tolerant of travel. I use it as a terminal at work (with uw...great program) and as a stand-alone at home. I rides with me daily to the office and back in its padded carrying case. It's survived even worse: One evening I took my wife out to dinner right after work. Since we parked in a questionable neighborhood, I took the Mac into the cafeteria with us. I was wondering how to carry both the Mac and a dinner tray when I spotted a roll-around highchair on wheels. Baby Mac fit quite comfortably in the seat. When we got to the end of the cafeteria line a helpful waitress volunteered to roll the "baby" over to the table for us. We started out towards the table when I heard a horrifying *THUMP* behind we. Yes, the Mac had leapt from it's highchair, over three feet to the carpeted floor. I could just imagine the disk heads skipping across the fragile media. It was with great trepidation that I later switched on the Mac, but the smiley face was a cheerful as ever!
newbery@rata.vuw.ac.nz (Michael Newbery) (05/09/88)
...and while we're discussing indestructible hard drives... the HD20 under my Mac Plus has a broken case, caused when the previous owner dropped it onto an airport tarmac. It works fine.