Re: Focus hard drive question

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

glue@apple2.com (Glue Sniffin' Ed) wrote:

>Hey everyone,
>
>I just installed my new Focus 500MB drive in my GS...and.....I was
>wondering if you guys might be able to answer a question for me.
>
>If I turn the GS on or do a <ctrl> <open-apple> <reset> It will not
>boot from the Focus drive.  I have to wait for the check system disk
>error....<ctrl> <reset> to get a prompt......then do a PR#7 to boot
>from the focus drive.  The Focus is in slot 7.....slot 7 is set for
>"my card", and I have tried setting the boot slot to both slot 7 and
>scan.  Warm reboots work just fine though...i.e. selecting shutdown on
>GS OS 6.0.1, and then clicking on restart.  Oh.....my GS is a ROM-03
>also....if that matters.
>
>Thanks in advance :-)

It sounds like there is something wrong with the Focus.  There are
two possibilities.

1) The Focus controller is faulty and not pausing to wait for the
   drive to tell it of ready status.
2) The drive has a jumper that controls whether or not it "talks"
   to the controller about its ready status.  If the jumper has fallen
   off, the drive and controller may not communicate and thus
   the controller does not wait for the drive to spin up and you get
   the check system disk error.

You may want to contact Tony Diaz to see what is wrong.  If it is
simply a missing jumper, you can easily remedy that.  Otherwise,
it may be necessary to return the drive.  Or at least the controller
part.

You could also plug the drive into slot 1 or slot 2 and set the
boot slot to scan.  That way, the IIGS pauses at slot 6 and slot 5
to see if there are floppy disks.  That might give enough time for
the drive to spin up.