Re: Sony 800K 3.5" drives: I/O Error Block #0002

["Paul Grammens" <grammens@svn.net>]

stephen e buggie <buggie@aix05.unm.edu> wrote in message
news:9m3r6n$hqu$2@lynx.unm.edu...
> About two years ago, I bought a dozen used "Mac 800K drives." These are
> the older type of external drives, used on Mac Plus. Its a beige case,
> slim low height, no eject-button,and NOT plug-compatible with Apple II.
>
> THE PROBLEM with all 12 drives is that they will not read or write disks.
> The drives are in excellent physical shape ---- good "kerchunk" intake and
> explusion of the disks. I am installing them correctly ---- 3.5 mechanisms
> known to work, work fine when installed in the casing.
>

I haven't run into this. Are they failing to work in the same case? If so,
I'd suspect the cable. If it is happening in several cases, maybe there is a
jumper setting or something on the drive that needs to be changed. I've
swapped these around and not run into this problem, though I can't remember
what I swapped to/from. I have a lot of old Macs as well as II's.
I have an old cable from a 400K drive that I use to test naked floppy drives
on the benchtop. I think it works with 400K, 800K and 1.44's You might try
something like that.
-Paul