Re: Apple IIgs not recognizing 3.5 drives

[obsbedia2@aol.com (Obsbedia2)]

<< o- When you say eject does not work, do you mean the 3.5" drives on both
computers do not eject disks when the eject button is pushed?
--YES
 
If not, are you
talking about doing an eject from the GS System Finder? 
--NO, I'm not currently running the GS/OS on the computers at school--although
one of my students mentioned Thursday that he missed playing the math game
SurfBurgers.

o- Did you test the 3.5" drives from both of the bad systems on a known-good
IIgs?
--NO, Yes, maybe...  both were good computers which were able to use the 3.5"
drives until they were tried a few weeks ago.  I popped in some word processing
program disks, but no 3.5 devices were recognized.

o- Were the 3.5" drives you swapped in known to be good drives? 
--NO, they were some drives that were donated from another school and I don't
know their history.  Two of the drives had program disk still inside and two
others were empty, but I had to use a paper clip to raise the disk mechanisms
to accept disks.

Were they
tested on a known-good IIgs after being connected to the bad systems?

--NO,  I was ready to write off the drives as bad when I tried one without the
5.25" Unidisk drives attached.  The 3.5 was recognized.  Hurray!  I tried it
with the 5.25s and again it worked.  I tried two more of the 3.5s and they all
worked.  Next, I set them up for Thursday's 11:20 lesson--only the 5.25" drives
worked.  The 3.5s were no longer recognized!

o- When you tested the 5.25" drives on the bad systems, were they plugged into
the 3.5" drives or directly into the Disk Port. 
--DIRECTLY into the disk port, with the 3.5 drive plugged into the second 5.25"
drive.

o- Are there any networking or similar kinds of Slot cards in the defective
machines?
--NO, but I threated to network the computers if the 3.5s didn't cooperate ...
and I will, too.

o- Were the two bad machines on the same power line? 
--90% chance YES

Were the machines
connected to the power line via a surge suppressor or UPS?
--NO surge, unless it's a minor one built into the multi-outlet stick.  Never
heard the term UPS, except for the nice truck that delivers Apple II treasures
to me.

Jay Edwards