Re: Focus Drive //e woes

[wkatz@nyx.net (William Katz)]

Jerry <SNIPawanderin@yahosnipo.ca> wrote:
> Michael J. Mahon wrote:
>
>> William Katz wrote:
>>> So I decided to turn on my Apple //e computer two days ago, after having
>>> it sit on my desk for about ~2 years.
>>> Everything seems to work except one part... my Focus Drive //e!! :(
>>>
>>> I turn on the //e, and for the first one or two seconds, it sounds like
>>> the Focus Drive will boot up (I can hear the hard drive whirring), but
>>> then the computer just sits there with the 'Apple //e' title on the
>>> screen.
> [...]
>
>>>  I have also *not* tried to put the hard
>>> drive in an ibm computer and see if any disk checking utilities would fix
>>> it?
>>
>> That wouldn't help, since PC utilities only "fix" disks with PC
>> formatting.  It would be a way to do a low-level format, but that
>> is almost certainly not the problem.
>
> If you buy the SpinRite program from Steve Gibson (http://grc.com/), it can
> fix a somewhat damaged hard drive.  It runs on a PC, but does not care what
> the high-level filesystem information is, as it talks to the drive
> controller and does its work that way.  I have used this software to repair
> drives that seemed completely gone and was delighted to have the data back.
>
> Jerry

Thanks guys for your replies.  I tried re-seating the card in slot 7, as 
well as re-seating the hard drive itself on the Focus Card.
I also tried getting Prosel to fix it.

So far nothing worked yet.

I plan on trying SpinRite 6.0 on the hard drive, but I have to get a 2 
1/2" to 3 1/2" ide hard drive converter in order to connect it to one of 
my desktop computers.  It seems like ebay has hundreds of them I can get.

Also, does anyone know if Alltech (Computer Circulation Center) still 
sells these?  I actually bought the Focus Drive //e from them back in July 
of 2001.  Maybe I can call them for support?

Anyway, if SpinRite does not fix the drive, I might 'fdisk' it to blank 
out any partition information on it.  If I fdisk the drive, and put it 
back in my //e, will I be able to format it okay??
If I remember, I think ProDOS 8 supports up to 32MB per 'partition' and I 
had 5 or 6 partitions on the drive (s7,d1 s7,d2 s1,d1 s1,d2 s4,d1 and 
s4,d2 I think were the partitions)
I assume ShrinkIt, or Filer, or any of the ProDOS utility programs will be 
able to format it just fine?

-- 
William D. Katz "a good skier"

Internet: wkatz@nyx.net