Re: Disk ][ Drives not working

["Bill Garber" <willy46pa@comcast DOT net>]

"Don Bruder" <dakidd@sonic.net> wrote in message
news:JoJEc.19790$Fo4.263681@typhoon.sonic.net...
: In article <pan.2004.06.30.23.17.16.824452@alirossdotco.uk>,
:  Alistair J Ross <mailat@alirossdotco.uk> wrote:
:
: > Hello again,
: >
: >     Thank you to all of you lovely people who offered to send
me a disk with
: >     DOS 3.3 in my recent problem of chicken-and-egg: getting
DOS to my Apple
: >     ][ Europlus.
: >
: >     Well. I have now recieved said copies of software (thank
you very *VERY*
: >     much), so I went about booting the disks (I have two
copies of the DOS
: >     master disk, just in case). Unfortunately, the ][ just
sits there on
: >     startup with APPLE ][ on screen. Drive 1 moves the head
back to the rear
: >     of
: >     the drive (if not already there) and it tries to move
it's self back even
: >     further (is this called calibrating?!) - in doing so, the
drive gives out
: >     a
: >     (what I would call) slightly irregular thud, thud, thud
sound. About 10
: >     or
: >     so of these thuds and the drive head ceases to move
against it's stopper.
: >     The drive motor continues to run however, until I hit
RESET.
: >
: >     Both of my drives perform the same issue when they are
set to be Drive 1.
: >     I
: >     have 2 Drive ][ controller cards which both do the same
thing. I have
: >     stripped the drive of it's casing to see exactly what is
happening but
: >     everything (with exception of the heads simply moving
back to the rear of
: >     the drive and hitting against the stopper repeatedly) is
normal. There
: >     are
: >     no immediate signs of wear and I have ran a non-abrasive
head cleaner
: >     through the drive just in case.
: >
: >     If I manually push the heads to the front of the drive,
then the drive
: >     first of all pushes the heads to the back again, before
resuming the
: >     normal
: >     thudding, so it seems to know that its got to go back to
the bottom to
: >     seek
: >     for something.
: >
: >     Anyone any ideas as to why this is happening? Should I
shell out the 20
: >     or
: >     so pounds on Ebay to buy a couple of new drives? I don't
really think
: >     there
: >     is that much wrong with these drives. Do you?
: >
: > As always, many thanks in advance.
: >
: >     Alistair Ross
:
:
: You're describing a drive that's not seeing any startup code on
the
: disk. The next thing to wonder is "Is this because the drive is
damaged,
: or because the disk doesn't have any boot code?"
:
: It's possible that the disk was written, or the drive is, out
of
: alignment. Although the recalibrate - the "thud thud thud" you
describe
: - should get it lined up over track 0. That may not get the
head to
: where the data is if the drive that wrote the disk wasn't in
good shape.
:
: Let's try this:
: Power off the system. Drop a disk into the drive, and power it
back up
: up. Wait until the recalibrate rattle finishes, give it another
couple
: of seconds, just to be sure, then hit ctrl-reset. If you're not
dropped
: into the monitor (showing a "*" as a prompt) then do a
CALL -151 to get
: into it. Once there, take a look at memory from about $0803 on
to $08FF.
:
: If most of the gibberish you see as output from that is a
pattern of "FF
: FF"s, alternating with 00s, then nothing is getting from the
disk to the
: computer, and it might be the fault of the card, the drive, the
disk, or
: all three. More testing is in order to see where the fault
actually is.
: If there's proper boot code there, then the disk itself is
suspect - The
: drive can read the bootstrap code, but can't proceed beyond
that point
: for some reason. Perhaps due to blown/non-standard sector
marks,
: corruption of the boot track, or who knows what else.
:
: I can't take you much further than that for troubleshooting
right now,
: but it's a place to start looking.

Is it possible that the disk is 16 sector and the
Disk II controllers are 13 sector?

Bill @ GarberStreet Enterprizez };-)
Web Site - http://garberstreet.netfirms.com
Email - willy46pa @ comcast DOT net
Change DOT to a dot to contact me



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