Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a218
From: a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: A2286 AT / Disk drive
Message-ID: <1968@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 31 May 90 20:53:07 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 36

In article <3558@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
consp13@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu (Marcus Cannava) writes:

>Can I then buy *any* IBM compatible drive, and just plug it in
>to the board, or does this render me without a drive? Does
>the A1010 work with the board?

     I replaced the 1.2-megabyte drive that came with my 2286 with
a 360K drive (I do most of my file exchanges with 360K machines and
wanted to avoid the possibility of trouble), and added a 3 1/2-inch
drive as well.  It works well, with a couple of quirks.

     First of all, whenever I shut the power off for more than a
few hours, the system configuration seems to forget about the new
drives and reverts to a single 1.2-megabyte drive; I get the message
"Drive 0 configuration error" (sometimes drive 1 as well) during
startup.  I think this is caused my my hard card; it seems to
remember things OK when I remove the hard card, but I haven't done
a lot of extensive tests on this.

     Second, the first time I try to access either floppy drive
after power-up or any re-boot, the bridge board will hang and
require a re-boot.  The only way around this is to leave the disk
out of the drive when I first try to access it.  Once I get the
"not ready" message I can pop the disk in and retry, and all is
well.  (If I time it right, I can pop the disk in while the drive
is trying to read it and it'll wake up too, but that's trickier.)
Again, this might be caused by the hard card but I'm not sure -
the 1.2-megabyte drive never did this.

     Given these caveats, I'd say go for it.  Of course, if anyone
has any idea what's causing these weird things, I'd appreciate
hearing about it.

Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP
My Amiga *is* a PC!  It says "Personal Computer" right on the box!