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From: ephraim@think.com (Ephraim Vishniac)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: A Miraculous Recovery
Message-ID: <40908@think.Think.COM>
Date: 23 Jul 90 15:29:09 GMT
Sender: news@Think.COM
Reply-To: ephraim@think.com (Ephraim Vishniac)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 26

A few weeks ago, I was complaining to anyone who would listen that the
internal disk in my shiny new IIfx was useless.  If any external SCSI
devices were connected, even in a 100% kosher configuration, the
internal drive had intermittent read and write errors.  My Apple
dealer was here twice to fix it, without any success.  Use of
different terminators, filters, cables, and disks had no effect. 

Last Friday, I fixed(?) the problem by accident by adding *another*
external drive and making the external bus longer. The failing
configuration included an Apple CD-SC, with or without a CDC Wren III
disk.  Adding another Wren III, for a total of three external devices,
seems to have cleared the problem completely.

When failing, the internal drive would report write errors every
couple of megabytes as I copied files onto it.  Attempts to run
"successfully" copied applications from the internal disk usually
ended in disaster.  After adding the new external disk, I copied about
60 megabytes of files onto the internal without any problems at all. I
fired up SpInside Mac from the internal and it ran beautifully. 

Can somebody explain this please?
--
Ephraim Vishniac    ephraim@think.com   ThinkingCorp@applelink.apple.com
 Thinking Machines Corporation / 245 First Street / Cambridge, MA 02142
        One of the flaws in the anarchic bopper society was
        the ease with which such crazed rumors could spread.