Re: Focus Drive (Parsons Engineering, BillH, SteveP)

[rubywand@aol.com (RUBYWAND)]

In article <dlyonsDIvCxK.HnK@netcom.com>, dlyons@netcom.com (David A.
Lyons) writes:

>My question is, booting straight to ProDOS 8 (rather than loading the
>GS/OS Focus.Driver), can I tell the card to spin down the drive after
>a specfied inactive time; or can I spin it down on command (either would
>be fine).

   Yes. Go to the Control Panel, click the Focus icon, set the timeout
value. The version which came with my Focus 80 had a bug which meant that
timeout occurred in half the time shown (except for the 1-minute setting).
 I notified Parsons; so, the bug may have been fixed by now. 

   At first, I worried about 'wearing out' the drive and over-heating
should it run with no timeout. Eventually, after several all-night
sessions with the drive always ON, it became clear that having the drive
go inactive was unnecessary. Besides, it's annoying to have to wait a few
seconds for the drive to spin-up after a timeout. 

   I'm fairly sure that Parsons no longer handles marketing or customer
relations for its products. For questions you might try Alltech or AV;
they sell Focus drives.