David Empson (dempson@actrix.gen.nz) wrote:
: Dave Althoff <dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us> wrote:
: > ARGHS!!
: >
: > I have a reclaimed 20Mb Vulcan GS [...]
: >
: > The disk boots fine. It seems to function beautifully. Using Copy ][
: > Plus 8.3, I attempt to copy some text files from 5.25" floppy to the
: > Vulcan, and everything goes haywire. I get an "I/O ERROR BLOCK $0000". I
: > try running a "Verify Disk" on the drive after the aborted copy, and every
: > block on the disk comes up bad. [...]
: Given the evidence, it sounds like the drive goes haywire when Copy II+
: attempts to write to it, but is fine otherwise. Have you tried copying
: files to the drive using another program, e.g. System Utilities? How
: were the existing files copied onto the drive?
I haven't tried another copy program just yet, but it is useful to learn
that C][+ bypasses ProDOS. I've never had any trouble with it before; the
existing files on the drive were all put there by the same version (same
copy, in fact) of Copy ][+. 8-(
: Copy II+ bypasses the normal ProDOS file system calls and uses the
: driver directly. There might be something unusual about the environment
: when it is doing this (which differs slightly from how ProDOS sets
: things up) which is triggering a problem with the Vulcan.
: For example, CII+ might be calling the driver while another slot "owns"
: the $C800 space, and the Vulcan's driver might not be using the $CFFF
: protocol correctly. (I'd expect a crash in this particular example.)
: Another possibility: which ProDOS version are you using? If it is
: ProDOS-8 2.0 or later, ProDOS might be using the SmartPort driver on the
: card rather than the ProDOS driver, and the latter might be buggy.
I don't recall which version it is; I think it is the ProDOS-8 version I
copied off of my GS when I set the //e up
: If the problem appears to be triggered by _any_ write to the drive, and
: the drive worked fine in another machine, I'd be inclined to think there
: is a fault with the controller, or its firmware.
: There isn't any kind of software write protection mechanism, perhaps?
Not that I know of...I think maybe I should pull out my Vulcan Utilities
disk and see if it has any suggestions. I swapped controllers when I
moved the drive from machine to machine (I'm now using a //e controller,
as the IIgs controller won't work in a //e), but that shouldn't make any
difference when the thing worked fine for a couple of years...well, until
last night, actually...
--Dave Althoff, ][.
--
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