Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!kent
From: kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Rodime fails to spin.
Keywords: Rodime, Hard Disk
Message-ID: <20900@swrinde.nde.swri.edu>
Date: 5 Sep 89 21:00:46 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas
Lines: 43


I came in this morning to work & found to my dismay that my new A2500
wouldn't boot up. The Rodime 40 meg drive refused to spin-up, and
instead, emitted a series of clicking noises for a few seconds.

In order to even boot off of a floppy I found that I had to disconnect
the drive in one of the following ways:

1) disconnect power to the drive
2) disconnect the controller cables from the drive
3) disconnect the drive controller from the bus

I have left the computer on pretty much all the time since I got it,
but had turned it off last weekend.  Am I a victim of the dreaded
"stiction" disease that is plaguing Seagate drives? (The Rodime was
assembled in Singapore).

For once I had the sense (or luck) to have backed everything up - Phew!
Now if I can just get something to put all that data back onto.

BTW, the dealer stated that they are experiencing a high failure rate
with the Rodime/2090A controller combination, & were now trying to
convince potential A2000HD buyers to purchase an A2000 and another
controller/drive combination (of the purchasers choice). Unfortunately,
they saw no easy way of making A2500 customers the same kind of deal at
a reasonable price.  I asked if there was a way to 'trade up' to a
better drive, but it appears not in the framework of Commodore's
warranty scheme.

Also, a friend just bought an A2500 also, and the 2090A controller
went bad just a couple of days after he got his system.

Question: is the Rodime/2090A combination  really experiencing such a
high failure rate and should I be concerned about another disk
failure?

Hopefully I'll be up and running in a few days.

Thanks,
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Kent Polk - Southwest Research Institute - kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu
        Motto : "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing"
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