warner@twg.com (Warner Losh) (03/01/90)
Greetings net folk. My Rainbow that I've had for the past six years (100B) is starting to give me some problems. When I first got it I had a couple of disk related problems, but an operating system upgrade and a few new RX50s later these were solved (don't ya just love computers that come with a full one year warranty :-). However, now when I try to read a disk that was created in my B drive (the lower one) in my A drive (the upper one, on the same spindle), I keep getting read errors. Don't have a hard disk, but I do have 896K of RAM, if it matters. The disk drives have never had anything done to them since they were put into my machine about six years ago. My question is: Do I need to clean the disk heads? Do I need to adjust something? Do I need to get a computer built with today's technology? An option would be to add TEACs to my rainbow, but I would then waste a side of the disk. Anybody got a driver that would allow double sided access? I know about the BIOS patches, but that does me zero good since I don't have BIOS sources..... Or should I just get me some of them there 1.44 meg 3 1/2 floppies and write me a driver for them. Anybody know if this will work? Or should I just get I-Drives from SS and not bother. If I get the I-Drives from SS, can I then use them transfer files from a PS-II or a MAC? I know the mac would be harder, but maybe there is some program I'm not familiar with. One last thought, media checking has been turned off (via a small program that I wrote to do it). I wrote that program so it would only take up one sector (512 bytes) rather than the three that DEC's MEDIACHECK.EXE takes up. I could even post it if anyone is interested... -- Warner Losh warner@twg.com My views and spelling are my own. Only the letters have been changed. Still waiting for my DECsystem XXXX to run TOPS-20. :-)
Frank.Mallory@f123.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Frank Mallory) (03/02/90)
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro > > Greetings net folk. My Rainbow that I've had for the past > six years > (100B) is starting to give me some problems. When I first > got it I > had a couple of disk related problems, but an operating > system > upgrade and a few new RX50s later these were solved (don't > ya just > love computers that come with a full one year warranty > :-). My recommendation: Add a Winchester drive (preferably HH, like ths 20MB Seagate ST-225), which will eliminate the need for two operational RX50s and bestow many other benefits on your system; and buy and use a cleaning kit for the 5 1/4-in. diskette drives. -- Frank Mallory at The Black Cat's Shack (Fidonet 1:109/401) Internet: Frank.Mallory@f123.n109.z1.fidonet.org UUCP: ...!uunet!blkcat!123!Frank.Mallory