Re: Help with a IIe and Disk-2

[rubywand@aol.com]

In article <970209.210801.19972@cougar.cc.oxy.edu>, delafo@oxy.edu (John de La Fontaine) writes:

>
>Help! I am having an aggravating problem trying to use Disk #2
>on a IIe (enhanced).
>Appleworks and Publish It encounter a read error when trying to
>access Disk 2.   I have ascertained that the disks involved are NOT
>write-protected. Disk 1 will read these disks just fine. 
>I put on another disk drive to see if the drive was the problem and
>had the same error.  I installed another Interface card and still have
>the same error. I even made another copy of Appleworks to make sure that 
>it wasn't corrupt.
>Until this error creaped in, the machine was functioning just fine with
>2 drives -- drive 2 being for data. 
>Is there anything anyone can suggest? I'm baffled in trying to find the cause
>of this error.
>
>

     Using a Cleaning Diskette in Drive 2 (and Drive 1) is a good idea if it has been a while since the last cleaning. About the only other semi-likely hardware problem is misalignment of one or both drives. (By the way, running complicated programs like AppleWorks is not the best way to check out drives and contoller cards. The best way is via Reads, Writes, Verifys, Formats, etc. under a simple, versatile utility like Copy II+.)


     If cleaning does not solve the problem, a good second try is to see what happens using an entirely fresh, empty Data diskette. Some versions of AppleWorks are known to have an odd quirk: when the number of files in a directory exceeds a certain number, you begin to encounter weird Read and Write errors. (I think the 'magic number' is somewhere around 65.)

     If there are no problems using the new Data diskette, you have probably hit the magic number in a folder on your original Data diskette. The cure is to delete any corrupted files and make more space by moving some files to other folders.


Rubywand