Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma!grahamt From: grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Wanted: Chinon Floppy Drive Horror Stories Message-ID: <3348@syma.sussex.ac.uk> Date: 29 Aug 90 09:53:08 GMT References: Distribution: comp Organization: SPRU, Univ. of Sussex, Brighton, UK Lines: 54 From article , by ralph@laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek): > Some time back there were numerous postings concerning the (in?)famous > Chinon floppy drive. As I remember, many people had problems with its > media change detection. > > What were the conlusions of those postings? My new Mega 4 ST has a > Chinon Rev B F-354 EAA drive in it. It has been sent back to the > dealer to fix the `media change problem'. I'm curious as to what > official solutions that were made available. > > Suggestions are also appreciated. Is there a good test program for > this problem? I'm not sure about the current state of Chinon drives on the Mega, but the external floppy drive I bought recently had the 'media change' problem. It was sold by a large UK distributor, Evesham Micros, and I don't know how widespread it is elsewhere in the world, but it's made by a firm called Roctec and it's called something like RF 302. It's advertised as having a Teac or Citizen mechanism - I guess it depends on the batch. Anyway, it's now back with Evesham with a request for replacement. The easiest way I found to test the existence of the problem is this: 1. Insert disk #1. Open any folder 2. Remove disk #1 and insert disk #2. You'll still see the drive window displaying disk #1's folder. This is normal. 3. Click on the top left corner of the window (the 'close box') to return to the top directory. A fully-working drive will proceed to read the disk, recognising that the media 'might have changed' and will then show the top directory of disk #2. A faulty drive not read the new disk and will show the top directory of disk #1. You can force the ST to read the new disk in a faulty drive by pressing 'escape' (at least, this works on TOS 1.4 and above; I'm not sure if it works for all TOS versions). The fault is easy to spot if you're at the desktop, but might not be so easy if you're writing to a disk when inside an application. There's a considerable danger that you'll mess up the file allocation table on the 'new' disk, as the ST will think it's writing to the free space on the 'old' disk. The only mitigating factor is that if you had to swap disks because there was not enough free space on the old disk, the ST won't overwrite the new disk because it will still think there's not enough free space. Graham. -- Graham Thomas, SPRU, Mantell Building, U of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RF, UK JANET: grahamt@uk.ac.sussex.syma BITNET: grahamt%syma.sussex.ac.uk@UKACRL INTERNET: grahamt%syma.sussex.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk UUCP: grahamt%syma.sussex@ukc.uucp PHONE: +44 273 686758 FAX: [..] 685865