Re: To bang or not to bang

[Tristan Mumford <xtristan.xmumford@xgmail.xcom>]

Michael J. Mahon wrote:

> Tristan Mumford wrote:
>> Hello everybody.
>> 
>> I have a little dilemma.
>> 
>> I wish to back up my collection of 5.25" disks, and also access them for
>> other reasons on my IIgs.
>> Up until now I have been using one of the Apple 5.25" drives from my //e.
>> I swear all the headbanging is killing it. But it transfers things so
>> quickly in IIgs mode.
> 
> There's no real stress on the drive from attempting to seek out past
> track 0.  The head motion cam hits a stop, and then the stepper motor
> stops stepping--but this does not cause any wear on the cam or the stop,
> and there is no extra acceleration of the head compared to normal
> stepping.
> 
> It just makes noise.  Don't worry about it.  ;-)

I guess C= 1541 has put me in the mindset of headbanging being slightly
destructive.


> 
>> My other option is to use an Atlas-8 drive I have. What sets it aside
>> from the Apple 5.25 is it has headbang protection. Ie no rattle-rattle.
>> However using this I would need to drop a floppy controller card into my
>> IIgs, which would mean a drop to 1MHz during transfers. (Or does the IIgs
>> do that anyway with smartport devices?).
> 
> For any GCR 5.25" drive it *must* slow to 1MHz.

That's very interesting. One thing that I noticed from the first time I
connected the Apple 5.25" drive to my IIgs is stepping and track0 seek
headbang are faster than on my platinum. I figured the read / write timings
were the same, but the seeking is noticeably ramped up except during boot
time seeking.
The change from jackhammer to rattlegun made me nervous, because the IIgs is
still relatively new to me.

> 
>> Sure there's the third option of making an adaptor to put the Atlas-8 on
>> the end of the daisychain, but I still don't feel confident enough about
>> the pinout, and don't feel like mutilating a connector down to the right
>> size if I can avoid it.
>> 
>> What would the best option be, in peoples opinion?
> 
> No action.

Works for me. Although having two slots consumed with drive controllers in
the //e is a shade annoying. And I do like having matching drives. But the
Atlas is such a nice drive too...

Good advice.

Tristan.

-- 
-----> http://members.dodo.com.au/~izabellion1/tristan/index.html <-----
=====       It's not pretty, it's not great, but it is mine.       =====