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Path: utzoo!utcs!wagner
From: wagner@utcs.uucp (Michael Wagner)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Problems and Questions about Disks
Message-ID: <1123@utcs.uucp>
Date: Tue, 25-Feb-86 23:06:39 EST
Article-I.D.: utcs.1123
Posted: Tue Feb 25 23:06:39 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Feb-86 23:20:36 EST
Reply-To: wagner@utcs.UUCP (Michael Wagner)
Organization: University of Toronto Computing Services, general purpose UNIX
Lines: 50
Summary: 

A few things that I've noticed...I wonder if anyone else has too.

(1) The 'Disk Gauge' seems to be connected to the wrong thing.  To see
    this, boot a workbench disk, get into intuition, open the workbench
    disk, then pull the disk and put it into the external drive instead.
    Put some other, relatively empty disk into the internal drive.  Notice
    how the gauge moves?  Seems that, once opened, the gauge is tied to
    the original drive rather than the original disk.

(2) There are some problems with error recovery and disk drives.  I seem
    to have an unreasonable number of i/o errors on my disks.  They almost
    always happen on the internal drive, and they are generally eventually
    fatal (as in Guru).  Seems there are situations (like disk verification)
    where the requestor button CANCEL is meaningless (it just keeps plugging
    away at that disk)...I suspect that storage corruption is keeping it
    from reading the disk properly, because it finally reboots, and then
    has no problem reading the disk at all.  Up until then, though, it
    get progressively worse and worse...it starts asking for disks with
    names it has made up, then unreadable names, and so on.
    The errors generally seem to occur around cylinder 60-70, are on
    certified (2-sided) BASF disks, and are somewhat repeatable.  They
    often happen during initialization.  They *never* happen on the
    external drive.  They are always of the type 'bad sector number'.
    An offending disk can be copied with the cli command DISKCOPY and
    the error will 'travel' with the disk.  Its generally readable on the
    external drive, but unreadable on the internal one.

    I have no idea what is going on here, and no idea where to begin.
    Is one supposed to clean these drives?   There were no instructions
    with the Amiga.  Are there diagnostics for this machine?  Any way of
    finding out what's really bothering it?  

(3) There seems to at least one other requestor button that isn't connected,
    and that's the CANCEL button on the 'your printer seems to be having
    problems' requestor.  I use a serial printer, and if I forget to plug
    it in (I switch between the modem and the printer), it waits a while 
    and then says 'something's wrong with your printer'.  A nice idea, but
    I expect the CANCEL button to mean 'I changed my mind...I don't want 
    this to print'.  It doesn't....it means the same as retry...it tries
    again.  After a few retries, it reboots the machine for me.  Nice going.

Oh, well...just thought I would ask if anyone else has experienced any of
this, and if anyone at C/A knows what's going on here.

On another plane, does anyone know when MANX C is going to make it out?
Is it really better than Lattice?  The pain of crossing my legs is killing
me.  Having watched Lattice run at a friend's house, I'm amazed that it
ever completes.  Have I missed something?

Michael Wagner (utcs!wagner)