Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!newcastle.ac.uk!turing!q1cbw
From: D.C.Halliday@newcastle.ac.uk (D.C. Halliday)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: STE and Hard Drives.
Summary: Problems with.
Message-ID: <1990Aug3.165416.28366@newcastle.ac.uk>
Date: 3 Aug 90 16:54:16 GMT
Sender: news@newcastle.ac.uk
Organization: Computing Laboratory, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE17RU
Lines: 30

All  STE and Hard drive Owners I recomend you use a verify function on
your Hard disk driver, an expplanation and question follow. (longish)

I have resently purchased a Third Coast Drive (65 Meg ST277-1 using an
ICD Advantage plus Host adapter.)

I  had  endless hastles with the Drive and to Third Coasts credit they
spent the best part of the day with me  trying  to  fix  the  problem.
After changing the original ST177N (3 1/2 inch mechanism) and the Host
board  we  concluded that the problem must be a new DMA chip. Changing
the chip (actually appeared to be a standard STFM chip) did not  solve
the problem. Anyway in the end they exchanged the entire mother board.
(Both  drive  and  computer where purchased from TCT.) This solved the
problem on initial testing. The drive partitioned and  performed  with
no problems for about 30mins and 60meg of data shuffleing arround it.

On  arriving home and using the drive to install all my software after
about 3 hours the write errors started to creep back. I have  narrowed
the  problem  down  to the STE as I turned the drive off overnight but
left the STe powered up overnight. On reseting the system and powering
up the drive write errors abound.

My  question  is,  how  can  I stop this degradation of performance, I
assume shortening the DMA lead may help but to what extent?  The  lead
is currently 36inches long.

Finally I would like to say thanks again to Third Coast.

Dave Halliday.
(D.C.Halliday@newcastle.ac.uk)