Re: *WARNING* to Focus Drive (and possibly Sirius RAM card) owners regarding write corruption!

[ludowick@aol.com (Ludowick)]

You wrote:

>I believe, based on a great deal of observation, that the Focus Drive has
>on-board RAM that it utilizes as a local disk cache.  This card-based cache
>RAM is only enabled when the FocusDriver is installed, resulting in the
>significant speed increase Focus Drive users have seen.
>
>However, if you use the GS/OS Memory Control Panel to specify a disk cache
>for the system to use, there appears to be some sort of collision between
>this cache and the on-board cache, resulting in corrupted writes (NOT reads)
>to the Focus Drive, regardless of filesystem type.  In addition, utilizing a
>GS/OS disk cache when running FocusDriver actually seems to result in a
>noticable _decrease_ in speed.

I've used a 120MB Focus drive in slot 7
of my GS ROM 01 for about 5 1/2 years,
with a GS/OS cache of 32K, with no problems.  I've had no corrupted files that
I couldn't trace to my own actions (Reset
key, block editing experiments, etc.).

I've not disabled the cache to see if I get
a speed increase.  I'll check that out.

My RAM card is an 8MB Sirius card, too.
And I've always used the Focus Driver (not
for p8, of course).  No accelerator card.


>The easiest confirmation of the problem I have discovered to date is to copy
>either a) HyperCard GS and the home stack from its program disk or b)
>AppleWorks GS from its program disk to any Focus Drive partition 

This I remember!  When I first got my Focus card,
I couldn't copy any large files from one
partition to another, or from a floppy to my
hard drive.  I contacted Altech, and traded
in my Focus for one that worked (I noticed
the problem quickly, and was still under
warranty, so it was free).  Contact Altech
and they might send you a compatible 
drive.  I don't know what the reason for the
problem was, but I've never had any trouble
since I got my drive serviced in '96.  The
problem will only show up for large file
copies.  Mention this when you send the
drive back to Altech.

Ludowick