HD woes

[dreamer@ods.ods.net]

I am writing this for myself, and also for another user who's asked for
my help because he saw a post from me that indicated we're in the same
boat.  I'll let him post his particular problem, tho...RRIVKIN@UMBC.EDU
is his assignment.

My problem is as follows:
Last year I purchased a 296Mb SCSI hard drive, Storage Dimensions case
with CDC mech, used.  The previous owner assured me it worked fine and
had few errors on it, he had it on a Mac.  He even formatted it for me
initially.  I spent way too much on it, but I didn't know market value
(then, I do know).  Sigh.

At the time I only had an Apple //e with a Rev C card.  I chained the
CDC to my other HD on it and proceeded to format and partition it with
Craig Peterson's HD SCSI Utils, managing to squeeze 7 32Mb partitions
out of it.  I copied my BBS entirely to the CDC and ran my BBS on it for
a while.  I had a few strange problems, but nothing major.  I even went
to the trouble of doing some benchmarks to find the best interleave.
(The //e had a 4MHz Zip, as well as printer card, SSC, Mockingboard C,
and Disk II card.  Enhanced, with a RamWorks III 1Mb.)

I had put the other drive (a Digicard Shared Resources Controller case
with Quantum 80S mech, 80Mb) on my other //e with an Apple High Speed
card.  I did this so I could work on my BBS without taking it down.  No
problems on that end.

Late last year I purchased a Rom 1 //gs.  At this point I had in mind
moving the BBS to the //gs and switching from GBBS to METAL.  I moved
the hispeed card into the //gs, and added an AST VisionPlus (which the
software doesn't recognize), a Soundblaster, Duodisk, two 3.5" drives,
and a Sportster 14.4k.  It had a 1Mb Apple RAM card, too.

I put the Quantum back on the //e for the BBS and brought the CDC over
to the //gs (after all, GS stuff needs more space!).  I used Craig's
software again to format and partition the CDC as I'd been told that
your HD should be reformatted when you switch cards because of different
requirements of the cards or somesuch tech conflicts.  I then acquired
the last release of System 6, figured it out, and used it to repartition
the CDC to use all 296Mb.  I started to copy Sys6 onto it and
encountered problems.  Errors that were sometimes there, bad files,
aborted attempts to install Sys6, corruption, etc.

I tried to reformat using the hispeed software, then partition with S6,
with the same results.

I finally went to a friend's house and had him format/partition and
install S6 with his RAMFast.  Flawless.

Took it back home, and started adding stuff to the HD and the problems
cropped back up.

Took it back to the guy I got it from.  He formatted and partitioned it
on his Mac, and copied HUGE (multi-Mb) files to it with no trouble.

I took it back to my //gs, with some recommendations from him, and the
same old shit happened.

I took it back to my friend's, this time with the cable, and was able to
duplicate the problems using my cable.  I bought a new cable.  It didn't
matter.

This shouldn't be happening!  Two different GS's, three different
cables, two different cards, and no luck!  Since I'd eliminated the
possibility of it being the cable, I decided to get a RAMFast, which I
managed to get at a good price from Charlie's Appleseeds, used.

With the RF, and new cable, I once again attacked the problem.  I used
the RF's firmware to format and partition, then tweaked the partitions
with S6's ADU (which I used above too), and tried to install.  I ended
up doing a manual install because it couldn't find the directory(?).  I
still had problems.

I made repeated attempts to format/part the CDC, with slightly different
techniques, all with the same results: manual install, file, name and
dir corruption, errors that were sometimes there, and more.  My last
couple of attempts were totally frustrating because I couldn't get into
the RAMFast using the "boot keys" to access it.  I got into it once or
twice by using the ROM.Drive copy of the RF.System utils, but had
problems.  Eventually, even this worked.  The boot key method still
didn't work, and when I tried to run the copy of the utils on the ROM
drive it would get through ProDOS and crash after displaying a few of
the delete(?) characters.  At that point I knew it was hopeless.  I gave
up.

As I indicated before, I was just about to sell it when I decided to try
it on my //e again.  I got the software I needed for my Multi-Kache card
(thanks Frank!) and spent the better part of last weekend trying to get
the hard drive set up.  I formatted, and partitioned the first 256Mb of
the CDC (that's all the MK can get at, which is more than I expected)
and proceeded to copy my BBS from the Quantum onto the CDC.  A good
portion of the way through the first partition, I started having trouble
with the copying.  I managed to squeek by, but when I copied the second
part it got to a file and just hung on it for minutes (76 blocks that
should've taken seconds) so I aborted.

I ran Mr. Fixit on the CDC to see what the problem was.  The first
partition it found 88 errors before it aborted itself.  The second
partition (where I aborted the copying) also had plenty of errors, and
the third partition (which I hadn't gotten to using) disappeared once or
twice, and also had many errors.  I tried to do a bad block lockout on
the first partition, and it aborted when it found a dir error.  I even
checked the Quantum to make sure it wasn't a problem, and it was clean.

I decided to reformat and start over, and encountered more problems.  At
that point I decided to eliminate the possibility of an interleave
conflict (the Multi-Kache recommends 1), and started running doing tests
by formatting the CDC with an interleave, then timing it while I copied
a large file to it.  Simple benchmark test.  I started getting anomalous
results.  I was around 4 and I copied a file to the first part with
other stuff on it.  It copied in about 1.5 minutes.  I then decided to
see if it was faster if I had nothing else on the part, so I did a
high-level format (I initially used FILER to do hi-levels, then switched
to Copy II Plus - both were recommended in the MK's manual) and copied
this same file (1186 blocks) to the first part - it copied in 46
seconds!  I was astounded at the difference created by no files.  Being
suspicious after all my troubles, I did another hi-level and copied
again.  This time it took over TWO minutes!  Once again and this time it
was a little over a minute.  Definite inconsistencies.  More problems
detected with Mr. Fixit.

After having spent the best part of my weekend arguing with my HD I gave
up.

The //e at that point had a printer card, SSC and Multi-Kache, as well
as being enhanced and using the RW III.  The MK handles all the drives -
floppy and HD.

I have had NO problems with the Quantum and the MK.  Whether the CDC was
in chain with the Quantum or by itself I still had problems.

Oh, I forgot, at one point I put an external terminator on the CDC while
it was on the GS to see if it was a termination problem.  I couldn't get
into the CDC at all when I did that.

If anyone has ANY suggestions for me, I'd REALLY appreciate it!  I'm
desperate.  I stand to lose more than half of what I paid for the CDC if
I sell it, if I can even sell it.  HELP!!!

Give what you would like to receive,
Glenn
Lord Wilderness


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