Re: IIe boot disk needed

[david@uow.edu.au (David Wilson)]

Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com> writes:
>If you've never heard an Apple II boot, the "grinding" noise can be really
>upsetting. What's happening is the head is being moved as far in one
>direction (I don't remember which, I think toward the rear, I'm sure someone
>else will clear that up) as possible then moving to the proper boot track.
>Don't worry, it might sound like the drives are dying but they aren't (or
>probably aren't)

It is stepping 35 or 40 tracks outwards. I used to park my floppy drive on
track 34 before powering off to silence this infernal racket. Then I got
a nice Multitech drive which was a standard drive with an adapter card in it.
It converted the 4 stepper motor phases into two signals - STEP and DIRECTION.
As the drive still had its track zero sensor it stopped stepping when it 
reached track zero. Silence. Bliss.

P.S. Yes, track zero is to the rear of a 5.25" drive.
--
David Wilson  School of IT & CS, Uni of Wollongong, Australia