Re: Tell me about drives

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

Charlie Springer wrote:

> The "white" drives with the DIN style connector and controller would not work 
> in the older //e's. The Disk II and controller were OK in anything.

How are you verifying operation?  Have you tried multiple older //e's?
Perhaps the controller card is not seating properly in the slot.

And I don't know of any drives with a DIN (circular) connector...
Do you mean the DSub-19 connector?  Both the drives and the controllers
are electrically identical to the 20-pin header connector style except
for the provision of both drive select lines and the "pass-through" of
the Drive 2 select to the Drive 1 select inside the drive.

> I only 
> have a couple of white drives thanks to UPS breaking a box and loosing a half 
> dozen along with 4 3.5''s. They delivered a big new box with a Platinum so 
> badly abused that the thick plastic corner in front of the keyboard was 
> broken free. They refused to check their pile of lost stuff and paid off on 
> the insurance. I have a bunch of Platinums, including one I bought in an 
> unopened box. No fading on that one! 

I've had problems with UPS, too.  Considering that I've used USPS about
ten times more often than UPS, it's significant that I've had several
problems (like yours) with UPS and essentially *no* problems with USPS.

In addition to obvious damage even before opening the box, I've had
items lost--and again, no attempt to recover them.  I've also had a
couple of deliveries that went to the wrong address, and I practically
had to grab them by the throat to get them to investigate and find them
(and hopefully to educate the driver).  Their position was that I had
signed for them--which, of course, I hadn't.  ;-(

In my experience, UPS (and with a much smaller sample, FedEx) have
serious quality of service problems delivering to residences.

-michael

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

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."