Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ukma!husc6!ogccse!blake!djo7613
From: djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dick O'Connor)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Floppy drives read troubles
Keywords: 1.2M floppy drives, read errors
Message-ID: <2240@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 89 14:33:51 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Univ of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 37


I've recently come across a problem here involving 360K diskettes that
can't be read by certain 1.2M drives, and I'm looking for further advice
on diagnosing and solving the problem.

Two of our field workers use XT-clone machines ("MX-10" models) with 360K
floppy disk drives.  When they format and write to a 360K diskette, every
machine in our office can read the diskette (including Kaypro XT, Zenith
AT, AST XT and AT, and even my Zenith Z-100 MSDOS machine!).  Every machine
except the two AT-clones belonging to their supervisors!  The AT's in
question are AIC-286 machines, and I'm not sure of the make of disk drives
used in either clone at this point.

The most recent diskette sent in was a good case in how screwball this 
problem is.  Nothing we could do could get beyond Sector Not Found errors
on the first AIC machine.  The second AIC machine gave similar messages from
DOS, but after flipping between DOS and XTree for awhile, finally was able
to read the directory in XTree!  Both AIC machines seem capable of reading
1.2M diskettes OK.

I suspect something is out of alignment with the AIC 1.2M drives, but it
could conceivably be a controller problem as well.  Is there any software
available that can test the specs of a floppy drive to see if we have
alignment problems?  If responses are of general interest, I'll post a
summary.  Thanks ever so much!

[Personally, I'd never recommend buying machines with names that sound like
missles or alphabet soup.  But it wasn't my call...]

"Moby" Dick O'Connor
Washington Department of Fisheries
Olympia, Washington  98504
Internet Mail: djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu
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DISCLAIMER:  I speak only for myself, not for the Department.  Here, anyway!
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               So long, and thanks *from* all the fish...