Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ucsd!ucsdhub!esosun!seismo!uunet!van-bc!rthurlow
From: rthurlow@van-bc.UUCP (Rob Thurlow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Hard Disk flakiness
Message-ID: <2208@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: 7 Feb 89 06:47:57 GMT
References: <40fa8983.14e01@elwood.engin.umich.edu> <480016@hpdml93.HP.COM>
Reply-To: rthurlow@van-bc.UUCP (Rob Thurlow)
Organization: Wimsey Associates, Vancouver, BC.
Lines: 32

In article <480016@hpdml93.HP.COM> rona@hpdml93.HP.COM (Ron Abramson) writes:
>I had similar problems with my hard drive.  I fixed it by moving the 
>host adaptor (small board which converts the Atari DMA port to SCSI)
>away from the mech and power supply.  Apparently, the host adaptor was
>picking up considerable noise.  If you use the ICD boot software, you'll
>be warned of trouble as the write verify will be turned on.

I have another anecdote to relate about flakiness in my hard drive
subsystem.  I have the ICD host adaptor, an Adaptec 4000A controller,
and a Vertex V170 60 Meg mechanism.  This lives in an IBM PC-XT case
and runs off of a 150 Watt IBM power supply.  The drive works very
well when cold, but when it warms up, I get the occasional retry
from the write verify in the ICD hard disk driver.  But the real
notable thing is that I cannot write certain bits of data to the hard
drive once everything is warm!  The resource file for Simon Poole's
DLII and the Magic Sac MAGICHD.PRG are two files that exhibit this
behaviour.  I don't mind the occasional retry, but trying to write
these files to the hard disk WILL NOT WORK, under any circumstances.
I've tried physical positioning and different 20-pin and 34-pin
cables; I have not yet tried a different 50-pin connector, and I
haven't yet tried cold spray.  I suspect that ringing in the cables
is causing troubles with a marginal part on the Adaptec controller
only when it is warm.  I admit I was a little annoyed when I found
that the ICD driver NEVER gave up and reported an error; rebooting
is not always the best way to recover from such a situation.  That
might be a nice change to make for version 2.3 of the driver :-)
-- 
"There was something fishy about the butler.  I think he was a
 Pisces, probably working for scale."   - Nick Danger
Robert Thurlow              {uunet,ubc-cs}!van-bc!rthurlow
Vancouver, BC, Canada       or rthurlow@van-bc.UUCP
In the heart of Kitsilano   or rthurlow@wimsey.bc.ca