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Re: Focus Drive //e woes

Mark Frischknecht wrote:

Michael J. Mahon wrote:


Sean Fahey wrote:


 To: wkatz
Nice //e...

An error #39 is generally bad/unreadable media.

The first thing I would try for now is put the Focus back in slot 7,
and slow
down the Zip Chip by pressing escape while turning the computer on.
Even then,
the Focus might not spin up fast enough to be ready so you might have
to reset,
pr#7. The focus should work with the Zip running at full speed but
let's test
it.

If the drive doesn't boot, and you can't access the volume even after
booting
from another drive, then you might consider getting a copy of ProSel
and see if
it can work some magic.


I'd also recommend an examination/patch/rewrite of the partition map,
but since the Focus map is proprietary, I don't know what tool to use.
Maybe someone has written one, or knows the format.

Two years is a long idle period, and I suppose almost anything could
have happened...but if there have been no catastrophes, I'd expect
almost everything to be intact.

You don't have a backup, I guess...   ;-(

-michael

NadaNet networking for Apple II computers!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."



Could you 170 Mb drive be having stiction problems?
It is  said that over long periods of time the lubercant that is on the
drive platters can cause the drive to stick to the platter.


IIRC, the OP said that he heard the drive spin up.


"Stiction is also known to cause read/write heads to stick the platters
of the hard drive due to the breakdown of lubricants which coat the
platters themselves. In the late 1980s and early 1990s as the size of
hard drive platters decreased from the older 8" and 5.25" sizes to 3.5"
and smaller, manufacturers continued to use the same calendering
processes and lubricants that they had used on the older, larger drives.
The much tighter space caused much higher internal operating
temperatures in these newer smaller drives, often leading to an
accelerated breakdown of the surface lubricants into their much stickier
components. When the drive was powered off and would cool down(say at
the end of the day when a user went home and shut off their PC), these
now-broken-down lubricants would become quite viscous and sticky,
sometimes causing the read/write heads to literally stick to the platter.


Another common problem was a result of making both heads and platters
much smoother.  If a head landed in the "landing zone" of a platter and
spent some time there without moving, it would slowly expel the air
cushion separating it from the platter and it would adhere to the
platter--just as two Johansen blocks are wrung together to expel air.

One solution to this problem was to micro-texture the landing area
so that the head surface would never make broad contact with the
platter, preventing the "wringing" effect.


The common solution to this problem was the counter-intuitive move of
taking the affected drive out of the host system, striking it gently,
but firmly on the side against a desk or something as laterally as
possible and then re-install it in the host system. This would break the
heads free of the goop long enough to power the system back on, have the
drive spin up and recover whatever data could be retrieved off it. While
the data was retrieved, the machine would be left on constantly so that
the heat from the drive's internals would keep the decaying lubricants
in a liquid state."
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction


I have found that connecting the drive loosely, so that it can be
wiggled as it operates, and then using your wrist to oscillate it
back and forth around its spin axis as power is applied will often
"unstick" a stuck head/platter so that the disk can spin up.

-michael

NadaNet networking for Apple II computers!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."