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From: ostroff@Oswego.EDU (Boyd Ostroff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: New FDHDs - reliable?
Keywords: mac, floppy drive, FDHD
Message-ID: <1990Jun8.201623.224@oswego.Oswego.EDU>
Date: 8 Jun 90 20:16:23 GMT
References: <10160@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Reply-To: ostroff@oswego.Oswego.EDU (Boyd Ostroff)
Organization: Instructional Computing Center, SUNY at Oswego, Oswego, NY
Lines: 27

In article <10160@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt4586c@prism.gatech.EDU (WILLETT,THOMAS CARTER) writes:
>Last week in this newsgroup there was much discussion concerning the
>large number of hardware problems people were having with their FDHD
>floppy drives.

I've had a number of problems with my month-old IIcx's FDHD.  I'm not sure
that "hardware problem" properly characterizes them, though.  The drive
seems reliable enough reading and writing high-density floppies.  It also
appears to be fine at reading and writing 800K disks which were initialized
on a Mac Plus, or older Mac II.  Formatting *new* 800K disks would appear
to be OK also.  The problems I've noticed involve trying to re-initialize
*used* 800K disks which were formatted on a Mac Plus.

In one case, I had about a 45% failure rate trying to do this with a fairly
large number of disks (~50).  When we re-initialize used disks on our Mac
Plusses, a 10% failure rate would be more typical.

>If I buy a new macintosh today, am I going to be given
>some squirrely hardware?

Again, I don't think "squirrely hardware" is accurate, but I wouldn't be
surprised if you experienced compatability problems with 800K disks in
the FDHD....

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