Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!hp-pcd!hpcvca!scott
From: scott@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM (Scott Linn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: 3.5 problem
Message-ID: <4480018@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM>
Date: 1 May 90 18:11:57 GMT
References: <90113.123631RJGRAHAM@MIAMIU.BITNET>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Corvallis, Oregon
Lines: 21

/ hpcvca:comp.sys.hp / RJGRAHAM@MIAMIU.BITNET / 10:36 am  Apr 23, 1990 /
>Help!!!
> 
>   I just purchased a HP 386 pc and the 3.5 disk drive reports "general
>failure" when I try to change directories or format disks.
>   When I first unpacked the computer and received this message, I
>boxed it up and exchanged it for another one which also has this
>problem.  Is this a common occurance or am I just doing something
>wrong?
>   After trying several disks, I was finally able to format 2 of them
>but even fresh disks cannot be formatted.  This seems strange.
>Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Is this drive 1.4Mbytes?  If so, I believe that they require the black
3.5" disks.  The failure that you're seeing sounds like one I saw the
other day:  I was trying to used a standard DSDD disk (720K bytes) in
one of our newer Vectra drives, and it wouldn't format it.  I ended up
formatting it on another computer, and then reading/writing it on the
386 machine.

Scott Linn