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From: nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Does Minix eat floppy disk drives?
Message-ID: <1806@sun13.scri.fsu.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 91 18:53:31 GMT
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Organization: SCRI, Florida State University
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I wrote in an earlier message (paraphrased):
>  ...for the third time, I have lost a 1.2MB floppy disk drive
>  on my Minix system.  On the other hand, I have never lost one
>  on my MS-DOS system.
>
>  so...I think...MINIX EATS FLOPPY DISK DRIVES.

Several people have sent me comments regarding this message.  A
couple of them agreed (that is, they had similar problems) and
the others wanted more information.

Let me first of all say that this was SOMEWHAT put out as a
"tongue-in-cheek' message.  That is, it seems like a heck of a
coincidence, but on the other hand I don't see how the software
could make the drive fail.

Having said that, let me answer the two questions that were asked:

(1)  WHAT TYPE OF DRIVE WAS IT?  It just said "made in Japan for
     IBM".  But the other two drives were not necessarily the same
     kind (I don't have them around).  Anyway, just a run of the
     mill 1.2MB drive, half-height.

(2)  WHAT, EXACTLY, WAS THE PROBLEM?  This is difficult for me to
     answer, because I'm not much of a hardware person.  I can only
     give the symptoms, which are (1) under MS-DOS, it will read
     and write a 360K disk, but not a 1.2MB disk. Says "data error"
     when I try and read, and "access denied" when I try and write.
     (2) It will not format a 1.2MB disk - claims that "Invalid media 
     or Track 0 bad - disk unusable".  Under MS-DOS again, of course.

     With Minix, it will not boot from either my 1.2MB boot disk or
     a 360K boot disk.  With a 360K boot disk, it gets the message
     "read error. Automatic rebooting" over and over.  

     Trying to boot up a 1.2M Minix boot disk is more interesting.
     What happens is that it sits there for awhile, with the drive
     light on, and then just boots from the hard disk as if there
     were not a floppy disk in the drive at all!  (Boots MS-DOS!)

     A friend of mine ran a diagnostic program on the drive, and it
     passed ok with a 360K disk, but would not even run the 
     diagnostic with a 1.2M disk.  My friend said that the rotation
     speed was incorrect, and that he could not bring it into line
     with a screwdriver adjustment.  It could only be varied between
     about 308.29 rpm and 330 rmp, and he said that it should be
     360.0 rmp for a 1.2M disk.

So perhaps these clues will mean something.  In the meantime, since
I don't have another drive, I cannot boot up Minix. :-(  But when I
DO get that sucker booted up, I'm going to go in and modify it so
that drive 0 is hardwired to a 5.25 inch 1.2M drive, and drive 1 is
hardwired to a 3.5 inch 1.44M drive.  Even though logic tells me
that Minix can't possibly eat disk drives, hearing those grinding
noises while it is figuring out what sort of drive it is always
gives me the creeps.



--
John W. Nall		| Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu  | Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306
   WB4LOQ (why? I dunno....everyone else seems to be doing it.  _._)