Re: IIgs and a vulcan drive

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Pentium wrote:
> I recently bought a nearly complete apple IIgs and I am stumped at
> booting it.
> The internal 20 mb vulcan drive is installed properly but the system
> cannot boot from it.
> If I insert the first of the seven gs OS 6.0.1 install disks, the
> floppy loads I get in a window:
>
> Disk EE1 may be damaged. Please move data to another disk.
>
> I first suspect a crash (value village is as gentle as a bull in a
> china shop) but I can still view the files in the drive. Another
> window then pops up:
>
> Unknown error #$005A
>
> Now the insaller can't see the drive unless I quit and look in the
> system 6 program launcher. I select the disk and get the error:
>
> Block number too large($5A)
>
> ....and return to the launcher.
>
> If I use the system utilities floppy and look in slot 7 disk 1 (the
> hard drive), I can see files. Lots of files.
> Some of the names look a little strange and I don't yet dare to try
> renaming them yet (i'm still reading the prodos manual).
> How should I backup? Fix? locate the driver?
> Massive amount of floppy swapping and transferring over to my LC III
> hard drive with a Prodos partition?
> I really don't want to format the drive, there is still goods in it.

It sounds like there are some problems with the directories of the
drive.

I'd get a copy of ProSel and run Mr. Fixit to check the disk for
file structure errors.

You may also want to image the drive before invoking any of the
"repair" options, since, for some errors, the fix may cause some
data loss.

Alternatively, if you don't care about anything on the drive, you
can format it, do a check on all the blocks (Mr. Fixit), and, if
it's OK, re-install what you want.

GSOS is pretty high-level to do disk diagnostics--I'd stick to
ProDOS until you're sure it's working.

Also, be sure to re-seat all the connectors, including the slot
connector for the controller.  It may have been a transient data
error that got memorialized on the disk, for which reformatting
is a cure, or it may *still* be having data errors, in which case
reformatting isn't going to prevent problems from recurring.

-michael

NadaNet networking for Apple II computers!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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