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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!hplabs!tektronix!reed!bart
From: bart@reed.UUCP (Bart Massey)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Re: Who Misses Older Drives? (Re: write protect tab)
Message-ID: <2572@reed.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Feb-86 14:42:18 EST
Article-I.D.: reed.2572
Posted: Fri Feb 21 14:42:18 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Feb-86 21:38:21 EST
References: <635@well.UUCP> <2497@reed.UUCP> <9607@amdcad.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 41

In article <9607@amdcad.UUCP> jimb@amdcad (Jim Budler) says:
> In article <2497@reed.UUCP> bart@reed.UUCP (Bart Massey) writes:
> >In article <635@well.UUCP> Peter Espen says
> >> ..like on many of the older 5.25" and 8" drives that we all know and
> >> don't miss.
> >
> >Speak for yourself.  I don't know if it's the IWM, the filesystem,
> >the mac format, or just inevitable problems with the high-density
> >medium, but I've seen more flakey mac disks in a week than
> >...
> >that was what made Apple use them in the mac, but frankly I would rather
> >have had a bigger box, with a 5.25" drive with a real VLSI MFM disk
> >controller chip in it...  Heck, the drives were almost the only thing
> >the IBM PC did right!
> >
> 
> Say what.  I've run my two mac drives a year and a half, cleaned them
> three times, and lost one (repeat ONE) floppy during that period, (not
> counting the one where I stuck a good disk into the washing machine).
> 
> During that time there have been two drives replaced out of 4 IBM PC's
> at work.  Those are XT's so we are talking about a 50% failure rate.

Ok, I'll bite.  The point is, at least on a IBM, when the drives fail, the
DRIVES fail, and quit writing disks.  This is because the MFM controller
uses a reasonable format, and can detect bad reads and crash the machine
immediately.  The most common failure mode we've seen at Reed on the 400K
drives (I would estimate half of our 500 odd machines have this problem
to some degree) is misalignment just severe enough to cause OCCASIONAL
miswrites, which make the disk readable ONLY BY THE MACHINE THAT WROTE IT.
And of course there's no way to realign the drive.  All Apple will do is
replace it.  Neat, huh.

At any rate, 50% PC floppy drive failure rates are unusual, in my experience.
Besides, many PCs contain third party floppy drives.  Try that on a Mac!
Admittedly, not all Mac drives are bad.  But the percentage rate, here,
is high enough to make me angry.  Especially when my machine at home is
one of them.
-- 
					Bart Massey
					..tektronix!reed!bart