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From: rfellman@ucsd.edu (Ronald D. Fellman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: The word from Quantum concerning 3.5" 40/80 Drive Fixes
Keywords: quantum
Message-ID: <7451@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu>
Date: 14 Nov 89 14:59:56 GMT
Sender: nobody@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu
Reply-To: rfellman@ucsd.edu (Ronald D. Fellman)
Organization: Dept. of ECE, University of California, San Diego
Lines: 29

A friend of mine works at Quantum and is involved with the 3.5"
drives (code-named TAKO). He wanted to set the record straight
concerning the recent problems with this product.

1) The problem is NOT with a bad batch of lubricant, it is that the
drives were exposed to too much humidity which caused the thickening of
the lubricant.  The drives are manufactured in Japan by MKE but are
completely designed Quantum engineers and made soley for them. The
abnormally high humidity last summer is what caused the problem to
become noticable.  

2) They do not consider the ROM fix to be a kludge. In fact, ALL new
3.5" drives are now being shipped with that same ROM.

3) There is no reliability degradation by using the new ROMs.

In summary, they feel that the 3.5" drive is a good, well engineered
product.  I suppose that they would say that the need for a new ROM was
due to not taking into account extremes in viscosity when originally
setting the ROM values.

(I am merely passing this information along as a favor since he doesn't
have access to Internet. Please do not send me personal mail concerning
this.)

(Also, I have not yet asked him about the performance degradation
reported on the net.)

-ron fellman