schorsch@oxy.edu (Brent William Schorsch) (12/05/90)
I have a MacSE (two floppy version) in which I had an authorized apple dealer remove one drive and instal a rodime 450RX hard drive. This was a few weeks after I bought my mac in June 1988. For about 1.5 years now I have had to deal with a neurotic hard drive... Every onece in a while, when my hard drive feels like it, it "kur-chunks" i.e. it sounds exactly like it is auto-parking, yet the power is still on. I could be in MSWord, maybe some game, maybe NSCA Telenet, it makes no difference. It has done this for system 5.0, 6.02, 6.03, 6.05... I am planning on buying an external hard drive this christmas & I wondered if it would be worthwil to have the 450RX removed & sent back to rodime, I have had my dealer look at it but he is unable to duplicate the problem (it has happened about twice in the last month & I use my mac 4-18 hours a day... this is why I have been able to live with it...) I have reformatted at least twice with no change... Another possiblity I am considering is using Silverlining to reformat my drive, but I don't know if this will work or help... Other symptoms I experience are: if I use the programmers switch to reboot, it takes years... (like 5-10 min), it also takes this long after a "kur-chunk". If I do a restart from the finder, it is relativly fast, as is a "rb" from Macbug. "rs" in macsbug is slow however... I run a lot of INITs but I don't believe this is the problem because I am *)% sure it has happened with no INITs, also I don't think it could be a virus, as it has been happening for too long to be undiscovered & I have current versions of SAM and Virex... Thanks in advance! -Brent Schorsch (schorsch@oxy.edu)
woods@convex.com (Darrin Woods) (12/08/90)
In article <131333@tiger.oxy.edu> schorsch@oxy.edu (Brent William Schorsch) writes: >I have a MacSE (two floppy version) in which I had an authorized apple >dealer remove one drive and instal a rodime 450RX hard drive. This was a few >weeks after I bought my mac in June 1988. For about 1.5 years now I have had >to deal with a neurotic hard drive... >Every onece in a while, when my hard drive feels like it, it "kur-chunks" >i.e. it sounds exactly like it is auto-parking, yet the power is >still on. I could be in MSWord, maybe some game, maybe NSCA Telenet, it You have discovered my greatest hatred against Rodime. Your suspicion of the 'kur-chunk' is very correct. An EX Crudime (as I call them) engineer explained it to me. The Rodime has a speed circuit like a hair trigger. If it detects that the platter speed is too unreliable it panics, and pulls the heads off. A few microseconds later, it decides that everything is hunky dorey and puts them back out there. It usually starts happening after the one year warranty has expired. It will grow until it gets to the point that it will do this about every 5 to 10 secs. At that point the drive is no longer usable. "I have never seen a Rodime drive that worked after one year" - yours may be the first Again, I'm sure there is one (maybe two) happy rodime users who will disagree, but that's why it is IMHO. Blacksheep Senior Systems Engineer -- Darrin R. Woods woods@convex.com This is a guest account. Convex knows nothing about what I'm saying, or even that I'm saying it.
pryals@cohesive.UUCP (Phil Ryals) (12/11/90)
In article <131333@tiger.oxy.edu> schorsch@oxy.edu (Brent William Schorsch) writes: >Every onece in a while, when my hard drive feels like it, it "kur-chunks" >i.e. it sounds exactly like it is auto-parking, yet the power is >still on. I could be in MSWord, maybe some game, maybe NSCA Telenet, it >makes no difference. It has done this for system 5.0, 6.02, 6.03, 6.05... I used to have a similar problem with a DataFrame XP-20. Turned out to be static electricity discharges that somehow caused the drive controller to recalibrate head position. Relocating the negative ion generator (air purifier) and grounding the frame of the table that the drive was on cured the problem.
johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu (12/13/90)
In article <691@cohesive.UUCP>, pryals@cohesive.UUCP (Phil Ryals) writes... >In article <131333@tiger.oxy.edu> schorsch@oxy.edu (Brent William Schorsch) writes: >>Every onece in a while, when my hard drive feels like it, it "kur-chunks" >>i.e. it sounds exactly like it is auto-parking, yet the power is >I used to have a similar problem with a DataFrame XP-20. Turned out to be >static electricity discharges that somehow caused the drive controller to >recalibrate head position. Relocating the negative ion generator (air >purifier) and grounding the frame of the table that the drive was on >cured the problem. This happens very frequently with my Bering Totem Drive as well. I can live with 'kur-chunk'; is any damage being done? Regarding the 'negative ion generator' ... Yikes, is this a hard-drive component? I have also read that incessant kur-chunking can result from the SCSI controller sensing, perhaps erroneously, that the drive media has slowed down ... Any ideas? Bill (johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu) (Sorry for posting -- mail bounced to the .UUCP site.)
steveh@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (Steven Howell) (12/17/90)
Brent, you have a problem. I have been repairing rodime drives at surface level for a year now, and have found, well what i have concluded to find is that the rodime is resetting. After having my programmer disassemble their on board MPU ROM. i found that it will reset uner certain conditions, one of them appears to be the temp of the current transfer HIC driver, and the other being CLV error report. (The Constant Linear Velocity IC reports a failure if for some reason the spped of the disk alters, or it strays from a certain reference track. We are still in the process of accumulating a data base on the rodime (Before cobra) range. the drive is repairable (easily), but involves heay testing before ensure the fix has solved the intermitten parking problem. During a reset it is considered parked, so it releases the solenoid and the spring within the drives forces a park situation. PS my keyboard is dying, Sorry about the errors, I have a Hammer tied to the keyboard via a piece of string (for those extra hard to get keys) Uni Of Tas.... Steve h