From: jacobson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu Date: 31 Aug 90 00:08 CDT Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware Subject: Re: Quantum Hard Drives Message-ID: <1029800013@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!jacobson Nf-ID: #R:dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU:24007:ux1.cso.uiuc.edu:1029800013:000:3796 Nf-From: ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!jacobson Aug 31 00:08:00 1990 References: <24007@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> I to have similar behavior problems with my 40 MEG quantum that was one of the Apple drives and just had to have the eprom replaced due to sticktion after 10 months. Let me explain my symptoms: 3 days after I got it back from the shop during one of the seek activation modes of the eprom (I know it slows down sometimes the access but this was more) my window would open up and no icons would appear (I was looking at a window with lots of stuff in it). I thought it had locked after 2 minutes so I shut the machine off and tryed rebooting. I found the same trouble you had, the light would come on but I got the question mark. Now I did not wait after 2 minutes for it to eventually find the drive and boot. I thought I had a failure and after turning it off for awhile then back on and still getting no reboot I took it in. It had been a very hot day and I thought my lack of air conditioning might be to blame. The dealer found after he got to it the next day that it booted fine. He ran all his diagnostic tests and found nothing wrong. I got the drive back. Things were fine for a day or so, but once in awhile I noticed a similar happening, the opening of windows and such would bog down incredibly, adn nothing would appear. Tonight I had one of these epsisodes after a long seek period. My windows took eons to open, I thought they crashed again like a week ago, but I waited longer and sure enough finally they opened and worked. But all windows took a long time to open---and the heads were not currently being activated---this happened after the activity stopped. I rebooted my machine with the shutdown to close everything properly (I have an SE/30). Instead of taking about 30 seconds to reboot it took nearly 3 minutes-incredibly sloooooooooowwwwww!!!!!!. I opened windows and things were running like molasses in all file accesses yet the heads were not being randomly activated all the time through this, and like you say when I access the drive the random activity stops anywy. Oh I also noted that for some reason my DA's had mostley disappeared from the menu the first time this sloweness started tonight. I rebooted once more and again 3 minutes. I went into my applications and all of a sudden the extreme slowness went away. Everything was back to the speed I was familiar with, and yet some eprom activated random seeks still were occuring. Rebooting got back to normal speed. My point for posting. I thought my troubles had to do with heat. Well tonight my house is very cool and dry, a nice cold front went through a day ago, infact it is cool. Your post reminded me of my symptoms. It appears to me that after some of the randomly activated seeks--not all a tremendous slow down in access occurs. Windows with lots of file take eons making me think I have locked up, but if I wait long enough- sometimes a minute they open fine. Rebooting gets affected the same way, and if I shut down improperly because I think I am hung, when in fact the access has just bogged down, the system gets confused and trying to reboot gets me the problems I encountered 3 days after the drive first "got fixed". These last problems sure sound like the same problems you have with rebooting---when you have a crashed system I bet it is not crashed--just totally bogged down. I find that if I wait long enough the locked desktop window will finally open. Anyway I post this to let you know I have similar symptoms on my fixed quantum, and to ask for input from others, now that i have isolated the symptoms down, to not a hot drive, but something that happens after some, but not all of the seek activation episodes. This thing has happened to me now three times in the last 2 weeks since I got my eprom fixed to deal with the stiction problem. Anyone out there care to comment.