Re: IIe boot disk needed

[dalloff@gcfn.org (Dave Althoff Jr)]

David Wilson (david@uow.edu.au) wrote:
: 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.

If I remember correctly, it's 40 tracks...what I am remembering is that
something I read somewhere indicated that a track recalibration involves
pulling the head back "80 steps" which would indicate 40 tracks.  So even
parking the head at track 34 won't completely silence it...it's just that
instead of "thunkathunkathunkathunkathunkathunkathunkathunkathunkathunka"
you'll get "woosh-thunkathunkathunka"...or with many Disk ]['s more like
"SCRAPE!-thunkathunkathunka".

Speaking of disk noises, with some experience you can listen to the drive
and know what kind of disk you're booting.  For instance, if the
recalibration is followed by "click...click...woosh...click...click" then
you are probably booting into DOS 3.3 (read track 0, track 1, track 2,
track 17, track 18...then start loading the program).  The most
distinctive boot sound, though, has to be Pascal, which does a little
"whirrr...clunka-click-click-click-clunk-click-click-click.....clunka-click".
I suppose you could dance to it if you were so inclined.  

I didn't often boot ProDOS from 5.25 floppy, so I'm less certain of what
that sounds like... 8-)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
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