Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!mtune!codas!killer!richardh
From: richardh@killer.UUCP (Richard Hargrove)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: 1.2 meg floppy failure
Message-ID: <2525@killer.UUCP>
Date: 20 Dec 87 21:58:42 GMT
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 31
Keywords: high-density floppy drive failure

I have been having a very annoying problem with the 1.2 meg floppy drive
on my AT clone system. For no apparent reason it dies with a critical 
error 

General Failure error reading drive A
Abort, Retry, Fail?

after which I must cycle power on the machine to regain access to the drive
(neither a warm boot via alt-ctrl-del nor a hard reset via the reset switch
regains the functionality of the drive). This problem occurs only when MS-DOS
is booted on the system (no problems with MicroPort SYS V). I was told locally
that there is a bug in the MS-DOS driver for the high-density floppy drive
and have now upraded MS-DOS twice (versions 3.2, 3.21, and 3.3) but the 
problem persists.

Other information: the system is a 12 mhz/1 ws Wells American, with 1 meg
of memory, WD controller, two floppy drives (1.2 meg and 360k), and a
miniscribe 6085. The problem itself is sporadic (maybe 2-3 times in one hour
or never in a week). I can't find a sequence of operations that consistently 
causes it. My major concern is continually powering down the 6085, though
in general, nothing good can come from it.

About six months ago somebody posted a patch to IO.SYS in MS-DOS 3.2 that
would fix a problem with not being able to format 1.2 meg floppies. Could
this problem be related (and the same or similar patch fix the problem)?

Any ideas or hints from anybody would be appreciated.

richard hargrove
...!ihnp4!killer!richardh
-------------------------