D.C.Halliday@newcastle.ac.uk (D.C. Halliday) (08/03/90)
All STE and Hard drive Owners I recomend you use a verify function on your Hard disk driver, an expplanation and question follow. (longish) I have resently purchased a Third Coast Drive (65 Meg ST277-1 using an ICD Advantage plus Host adapter.) I had endless hastles with the Drive and to Third Coasts credit they spent the best part of the day with me trying to fix the problem. After changing the original ST177N (3 1/2 inch mechanism) and the Host board we concluded that the problem must be a new DMA chip. Changing the chip (actually appeared to be a standard STFM chip) did not solve the problem. Anyway in the end they exchanged the entire mother board. (Both drive and computer where purchased from TCT.) This solved the problem on initial testing. The drive partitioned and performed with no problems for about 30mins and 60meg of data shuffleing arround it. On arriving home and using the drive to install all my software after about 3 hours the write errors started to creep back. I have narrowed the problem down to the STE as I turned the drive off overnight but left the STe powered up overnight. On reseting the system and powering up the drive write errors abound. My question is, how can I stop this degradation of performance, I assume shortening the DMA lead may help but to what extent? The lead is currently 36inches long. Finally I would like to say thanks again to Third Coast. Dave Halliday. (D.C.Halliday@newcastle.ac.uk)
aimd@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Davidson) (08/08/90)
In article <1990Aug3.165416.28366@newcastle.ac.uk> D.C.Halliday@newcastle.ac.uk (D.C. Halliday) writes: >All STE and Hard drive Owners I recomend you use a verify function on >your Hard disk driver, an expplanation and question follow. (longish) > >I have resently purchased a Third Coast Drive (65 Meg ST277-1 using an >ICD Advantage plus Host adapter.) You never really mentioned what problems you had with your drive? If it was constant write failures then this may be a fault which Atari has actually (tried) to fix. Well, at least there is a hardware modification suggested by Atari to get bothersome drives to work. However, I believe Ataris instructions were somewhat confused but I'm trying to find out currently whether I can get my Power Drive fixed. (But in this case the problem is crashing upon reset). When I got my STE it totally crashed my hard drive and writes always failed. Best Prices checked my machine with a Megafile 30 and it worked, but they sent me a new machine anyway. I've had absolutely no write problems (or read for that matter) with the new machine. Maybe you could ask your dealer(?) for a replacement. Mark.
D.C.Halliday@newcastle.ac.uk (D.C. Halliday) (08/11/90)
In article <5569@castle.ed.ac.uk> aimd@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Davidson) writes: >In article <1990Aug3.165416.28366@newcastle.ac.uk> D.C.Halliday@newcastle.ac.uk (D.C. Halliday) writes: > >You never really mentioned what problems you had with your drive? If it >was constant write failures then this may be a fault which Atari has >actually (tried) to fix. Well, at least there is a hardware modification >suggested by Atari to get bothersome drives to work. > My problem was constant write fails. The problem after Third coast kindly changed my STE is occasional write errors (only when machine is very hot.) To partialy solve the problem I have removed the metal shielding and raided the machine 5mm of the desk. This improved ventilation meens I can use my STE for about 6 - 7 hours befor the first write error arrives. >However, I believe Ataris instructions were somewhat confused but I'm >trying to find out currently whether I can get my Power Drive fixed. >(But in this case the problem is crashing upon reset). > >When I got my STE it totally crashed my hard drive and writes always >failed. Best Prices checked my machine with a Megafile 30 and it worked, >but they sent me a new machine anyway. I've had absolutely no write >problems (or read for that matter) with the new machine. Maybe you could >ask your dealer(?) for a replacement. This sounds just like my old problem. Dave H. (D.C.Halliday@newcastle.ac.uk)
grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas) (08/14/90)
From article <1990Aug10.184643.11228@newcastle.ac.uk>, by D.C.Halliday@newcastle.ac.uk (D.C. Halliday): >> >>You never really mentioned what problems you had with your drive? If it >>was constant write failures then this may be a fault which Atari has >>actually (tried) to fix. Well, at least there is a hardware modification >>suggested by Atari to get bothersome drives to work. >> It might be useful if someone would post Atari's suggested modification to the net, so that people who know about these things could evaluate and improve on it. I have a question on the problem. I've seen several people in the UK mention it, but can't remember if the problem has surfaced anywhere else in the world. Maybe Claus Brod posted something about it, but I can't remember if it applied to Germany or if he was just trying to help UK users. Is the problem limited to the UK? I suspect not, and that the UK bias is mainly because of the way STEs have been distributed here in greater numbers. But if it is a UK problem (or even a European problem) then it might be due to differences between American and European/UK power supplies. (I'm probably just showing my ignorance here.) The latest article I've seen on the problem in the printed press (From the UK ST Club newsletter) suggests that STEs should work OK with newer Atari Megafiles, but not with older ones, SH205s, SH204s and most third-party manufacturers' products. If I didn't know Atari were so under-resourced, I'd suspect a conspiracy. (Oops! This is straying from the 'tech' area. Sorry.) Graham -- Graham Thomas, SPRU, Mantell Building, U of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RF, UK JANET: grahamt@uk.ac.sussex.syma BITNET: grahamt%syma.sussex.ac.uk@UKACRL INTERNET: grahamt%syma.sussex.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk UUCP: grahamt%syma.sussex@ukc.uucp PHONE: +44 273 686758 FAX: [..] 685865