Path: utzoo!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!bmers58!mlord
From: mlord@bmers58.UUCP (Mark Lord)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: backup programs
Message-ID: <145@bmers58.UUCP>
Date: 23 Aug 89 16:44:02 GMT
References: <44566@bbn.COM> <40970021@hpindda.HP.COM> <2503@husc6.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: mlord@bmers58.UUCP (Mark Lord)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 24

In article <2503@husc6.harvard.edu> waldman2@husc8.UUCP (Bruce Waldman) writes:
>I have had lots of trouble using Fastback to back up files
>on my XT and AT clones.  The symptoms are: after backing up
>some number of disks, the terminal hangs, with the light on
>the floppy drive on but the drive apparently not writing. 
>This happens on all the floppy drives (1.2m, 360k, 1.44 m),
>so the problem is not a faulty drive.  Sometimes this happens
>during the first diskette write, sometimes after 10 or 15
>diskettes have been written.  It is totally unpredictable.
> ...
I had an AT clone with exactly these symptoms.  Took a while, but I eventually
figured out that the floppy controller was "old style" and therefore a bit
marginal above 8Mhz (my AT ran at 10 or 6Mhz, switchable).  The hard drive
controller, on the same card, works flawlessly at either speed.

My solution, and suggestion for you, was to only access the floppy drive
when in NON-TURBO mode (6mhz for me).  by "access", this means reading/writing
or even just inserting/removing floppys from the drive.

Hope this helps.

(btw.  the controller was a Western Digital 2:1 MFM 2HD+2FD job).

-Mark