On Aug 4, 8:57 pm, bloomer_au <bloo...@iprimus.com.au> wrote:
Thanks for the advice guys.
To clarify one point:
"> Last night, after I played some Savage Island Part I, I put in a
different 5.25, and it did the screwing my drive routine.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this... Do you mean that after
running this disk, disks that previously worked stop working? "
Yes, that is what I mean :) The Scott Adams disk ran fine multiple
times, but then I put this 2nd disk in. The 2nd disk wouldn't boot and
I got 'check startup device!', and then when I went back to the Scott
Adams disk, it wouldn't boot either. That suggested to me the
mechanism of the 2nd disk introducing some crud into the drive. I had
experienced this same pattern of trouble before with several 5.25s,
one standalone and a kind of duodisk thing (unsure of brand) attached
to an Apple II clone. So the pattern has been - disks work, then after
a particular disk is put in (not the exact same one mentioned in this
example) nothing works. Then after a clean or three, maybe I get to
the point where the first disk is okay to be run again. Or maybe
nothing ever works again. And my disks have been stored very well as
far as I can tell.
Ah, the "Disk of Death" syndrome. It has been documented, by me and a
few others.
After checking some disks that come out fine, put in another suspect
disk. It is unreadable.
Suddenly, you go through several more unreadable disks, then try a
previous disk, suspecting that something is wrong.
It no longer works.
The "suspect" disk "crudded" up your head. When you tried subsequent
disks, the "crud" basically sliced into the disk surface and messed
them up, including previous disks. Upon close inspection, I've
actually seen the disk surface marred after such an incident.
You may get the drive back by cleaning, you may not. I've gone through
several 3.5" drives on my PC because of going through "mystery" disks
that did exactly the above. The disks were ruined and I've lost at
least two drives that way. Probably wound up ruining the head by being
too rough during the cleaning process after a more mild attempt
failed.
A note about disk cleaners - I used to trust them, but the last time I
used one it ruined my last 3.5" drive (a new one I had just put in
after the previous one failed after a couple of months).
These are the dangers of going through old disks.