Re: *WARNING* to Focus Drive (and possibly Sirius RAM card) owners regarding write corruption!

["Rodney Hester" <rod3@mindspring.com>]

<warnken@nospam@mother.com> wrote in message
news:_1OU6.11723$zv1.928664@e420r-sjo3.usenetserver.com...
>
> <<That's very interesting.  Did you have to get a new card?  I can't
imagine
> why _any_ application should cause the FocusDrive grief, with the possible
> exception of very, very high levels of I/O (which I believe AppleWorks GS
to be incapable of).
>
> Rodney>>
>
> Is is possible the Focus driver is haywire?

If it is, they all are - I've redownloaded the 1.02 driver from 3 separate
sources, same problem.

Interestingly enough, I was able to cause corruption *once* today _without_
FocusDriver loaded.  Between that, and the fact that my LED no longer lights
(started sometime last night/this morning), I'm becoming increasingly
convinced the card itself is on the fritz.

I've tried changing the power supply, moving it to different slots, removing
other cards, etc. to no avail.

> I do have a glitch in my system that's independent of the card.  It
periodically and randomly crashes into the monitor.  The problem has
improved with the upgraded Transwarp.  It occurred with the old Focus as
well as the new. BTW I do have a Buggie Power supply with 200 watt rating.

Is the 'Buggie' power supply a "drop in" replacement for the Apple one, or
is it external?  Does it require wiring changes (the "fattening" of leads
I've read about) on the MB?

> I have an old and new Focus.  The old Focus still works but it's slowly
going south.  The save files function of AWGS - and it began to happen with
Spectrum saving test files too (so figure that out - S key or gremlins).  I
have had to boot the old Focus HD to copy data via SCSI drives as I have to
arrange making 17 partitions fit in 11.

This sounds suspiciously like the same type of write corruption I'm seeing -
bet you dollars to donuts that if you copy AWGS from floppy over your
currently-kinda-working copy, it'll fry it forever.

> The first replacement Focus I bought I returned because I had this problem
with slot 7.  That's when I talked to Tony.  He sent me a different Focus
and I had the same problem.  I figured it wasn't worth complaining about if
the card works, but not in slot 7.  The main problem with running it in slot
6 is that I sometimes use the 5.25" drive.  I need the SCSI drive in 7 to
boot from.

Do you happen to know if they offer out-of-warranty replacement (for a fee,
of course)?

> My GS SIG guru hates AppleWorks GS.  He says it has 150 known bugs and the
database is unreliable.

To be honest, with the possible exception of the spreadsheet function, I
couldn't give a whit about AWGS - I'm simply using it as something of a
'diagnostic' to track down other problems at this point.  =)

Rodney