conklin@eecae.UUCP (Terry Conklin) (10/06/88)
A word of warning to you folks considering a purchase of the XF551 and
or Flight Simulator II from Sublogic. These two products are NOT
compatible. I have tried multiple copies of Flight Sim II (fortunately,
friends have it too) and my XF551 simply wont boot them. It's not just
a matter of booting the disks. Switching back to my 810 drive, they (of
course) work just fine.
If I boot with the 810, and then switch drives, it will fail anyhow, on the
next disk access.
It's my impression that this has something to do with a protection scheme on
the disk. Being that my 810 has trouble reading the high tracks on diskettes
(which is why I wanted a decent drive in the first place) I _need_ to be able
to use my good drive.
Being as I started flight school last week, I'm rather miffed.
I have yet to call Sublogic about the problem. But I will.
Terry Conklin
{msudoc|frith|eecae}!conklin
conklin@egr.msu.edu
The Club (517) 372-3131euloth@dalcsug.UUCP (George Seto) (10/07/88)
In article <12295@eecae.UUCP>, conklin@eecae.UUCP (Terry Conklin) writes: > > A word of warning to you folks considering a purchase of the XF551 and > or Flight Simulator II from Sublogic. These two products are NOT > compatible. I have tried multiple copies of Flight Sim II (fortunately, > friends have it too) and my XF551 simply wont boot them. It's not just > > I have yet to call Sublogic about the problem. But I will. I believe this was identified back in the spring. I remember seeing messages to the effect that the problem had been identified as early as the winter and that Sublogic and Atari had been made aware that this combination wasn't working back then. Sorry to hear it still hasn't any solution. The only one that comes to mind is maybe the cartridge version might work. I am assuming that you have the disk version of the Flight Sim. Good Luck, Terry. Hope they have a solution for you. BTW, I remember the earliest I saw mention was on a BBS in New York, and I believe it was also on Atari's own BBS at around the same time, Mar/April time frame. Can't remember for sure if the information hit the Usenet systems or not. -- ******************************************************************************* * euloth@dalcsug.uucp || Disclaimer: All opinions are my own unless other- * * /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ || wise noted. * ****AKA: Atari Nut*************************************************************
jwt@atari.UUCP (Jim Tittsler) (10/07/88)
In article <12295@eecae.UUCP>, conklin@eecae.UUCP (Terry Conklin) writes: > > > A word of warning to you folks considering a purchase of the XF551 and > or Flight Simulator II from Sublogic. These two products are NOT > compatible. There was a problem with the protection scheme used on early copies of Flight Simulator II that would keep it from working with the XF551. Sublogic is aware of the problem and can provide you with a fix. I am told the same thing can apply to some copies of the "Scenery Disks." Jim Tittsler, Systems Engineer, Atari Corp. {ames, portal}!atari!jwt
kimes@ihlpe.ATT.COM (Kit Kimes) (10/08/88)
> > > A word of warning to you folks considering a purchase of the XF551 and > or Flight Simulator II from Sublogic. These two products are NOT > compatible. I have tried multiple copies of Flight Sim II (fortunately, > friends have it too) and my XF551 simply wont boot them. It's not just > a matter of booting the disks. Switching back to my 810 drive, they (of > course) work just fine. > > It's my impression that this has something to do with a protection scheme on > the disk. Being that my 810 has trouble reading the high tracks on diskettes > (which is why I wanted a decent drive in the first place) I _need_ to be able > to use my good drive. > The September issue of Current Notes (the Washington area user group magazine/newsletter) had a review of the XF551 by Curt Sandler. He had the same problem with FS II that Terry did. It turns out that Atari set the disk drive speed on the XF551 at 300 rpm instead of the old 288 rpm speed. This is ok for most software, but FS II is very sensitive to drive speed. This may be part of their protection scheme. They didn't offer any solution, but it would seem to me that the speed could be changed to 288 rpm. With this information, maybe you could experiment some and report back to the net. Kit Kimes AT&T--Bell Laboratories ...att!ihlpe!kimes