Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!psuvax1!gatech!utkcs2!alphard!mueller
From: mueller@alphard.cs.utk.edu (Carl Mueller)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Amax troubles, monitors, 400K drives
Summary: Amax problems?  Which multiscan monitor?  About 400K drives
Keywords: Amax monitors 400K drives
Message-ID: <1191@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu>
Date: 18 Oct 89 03:21:29 GMT
References: <584@tau.sm.luth.se> <2161@convex.UUCP>
Sender: news@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu
Reply-To: mueller@alphard.cs.utk.edu (Carl Mueller)
Organization: CS Dept -- University of TN, Knoxville
Lines: 46

As you notice, I'm trying to kill a few birds here with 1 stone.
Background:  I've got an Amiga 500 with 1Meg & a generic external drive.

First Item:

    I've got an Amax, 128K Mac Roms, and a generic Mac 800K ext. disk drive.
I can get to the Mac startup screen without any problems, but when I put a
Mac system disk in the Mac drive, nothing happens.  The drive does spin for
half a second, but nothing else.  The question mark continues to flash.
    If I put a mini-transfer disk with system & finder in the Amiga drive,
the computer gives me the X-disk icon (telling me that it can't boot that
disk) and gives the eject signal.
    If I put an Amiga-format system disk in the Amiga drive, it will boot,
but the Mac drive still plays dead, and if I put a mini-transfer disk in the
Amiga drive, all I get is the eject signal (NOT typical Mac behavior).
    The Amax manual says it could be bad 8520s, so I switched the two in the
500, but nothing changed.  I guess they could both be bad, but everything
else works fine.  The Mac drive works fine on any Mac, so I'm fairly sure
it's not at fault.

    Any clues, anyone?

Second Item:

    I'm looking for a good multiscan monitor that works well with the Amiga
in all its present and future modes.  I've tried a Packard Bell, and while it
worked fine in non-interlace mode, it's interlace picture was fairly bad.  The
lines were not spaced properly, and the flicker seemed worse than average.  I
have heard positive comments about the Mitsubishi Diamondscan and Sony 1302?,
but do they work well in interlace mode?

Third Item:

    I've noticed that some of you are trying to use Mac 400K drives with that
Mac drive interface.  I don't think that it works because the 400K drive
requires a timing signal from the computer to set the proper drive speed.
The 800K drives don't require this signal.  If the device was made for 800K
drives (likely), then it probably doesn't support 400K drives.

Finally:

    (Thanx 1e6) to anyone who can answer my questions.

-Carl Mueller  (cmueller@utkux1.utk.edu or see above)
               (cmueller@utkvx1.bitnet)
-Yes, this is my first posting, so I don't have a creative banner yet.