wouk@unc.UUCP (Arthur Wouk) (02/11/85)
I tried to send this out a few weeks ago, but apparently it didn't make it. Here is a second try. From wouk Mon Jan 28 09:25:16 1985 Article 9441 of net.micro: I have recently had the following experience with me DEC Rainbow. I received the Rainbow in March of 1984, with two floppy drive units (four discs) and began using Verbatim Datalife floppies at that time. I started using Dysan floppies in September or so, when our puchasing department switched to them. About two weeks ago I began to have troubles reading from drive d:, which could be overcome by moving the floppy to drive a:. A few days later this trouble reappeared on drive a:. I tried to format a new box of Dysan discs but was unable to format them on any combination of drives, one for the program, the other for the disc to be formatted. At this point I called DEC Support and they set up a visit from the repair services. The repairman came, and he tried the usual. Replaced all possible electronics to no avail. He could not get DEC floppies to format from DEC furnished CPM sources. In all cases CPM reported that the drives were not in acceptable speed range. Replacedment of all four drives (two disc units) made DEC floppies work, but did not permit formatting of Dysan discs. The word from the DEC phone backup support people is the follow- ing: Rainbow drives are intended to be used with floppies WITHOUT reinforcement rings about the central hole. The presence of these rings damages the drives, while the drives damage the rings, to the extent that eventually BOTH are unusable. You must use un- reinforced floppies. There is no statement of this in any DEC literature, but the software which is DEC-suppled is always on unreinforced discs. Apparently this problem has just begun to surface. Change your floppies as soon as possible to unreinforced, or expect trouble with the drives eventually. With my new drives, I am able to read the VERBATIM discs but not the 10 or so DYSAN discs. I am puzzling over methods to recover the information on the latter discs. From wouk Tue Jan 29 09:31:14 1985 Article 9444 of net.micro: An addendum to my note "Warning to DEC Rainbow users." Several floppy manufacturers (Memorex, 3M, Inmax, ... ) now sell a disc for the Rainbow with special format. The same discs are also to be used with the Decmate II ( NOT the I) and the PRO 350 series. Apparently DEC changed their drives at about the time the Rainbow was introduced without telling anyone.
hummel@csd2.UUCP (Robert Hummel) (02/14/85)
/* csd2:net.micro / wouk@unc.UUCP (Arthur Wouk) / 8:46 am Feb 11, 1985 */ > The word from the DEC phone backup support people is the follow- > ing: Rainbow drives are intended to be used with floppies WITHOUT > reinforcement rings about the central hole. The presence of these > rings damages the drives, while the drives damage the rings, to > the extent that eventually BOTH are unusable. You must use un- > reinforced floppies. There is no statement of this in any DEC > literature, but the software which is DEC-suppled is always on > unreinforced discs. This sounds very fishy to me. I've been using ordinary 3M SS/DD diskettes with hub rings on two Rainbows for 15 months. The only trouble I ever had with floppy drives occurred before I started using the 3M disks. I suspect that someone has been feeding Mr. Wouk a line of bull. Tony Movshon (using a friend's account) uucp: {seismo|ihnp4|allegra}!cmcl2!hipl!tony arpa: hipl!tony@nyu-cmcl2