Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!tmsoft!masnet!canremote!mdapoz@hybrid.uucp From: mdapoz@hybrid.uucp@canremote.uucp (mdapoz@hybrid.UUCP) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Miniscribe troubles Message-ID: <89122504042373@masnet.uucp> Date: 21 Dec 89 05:04:00 GMT Organization: Canada Remote Systems Limited, Mississauga, ON, Canada Lines: 46 From: mdapoz@hybrid.UUCP (Mark Dapoz) Orga: The Home for Unemployed Basselopes, Toronto, Ontario, Canada In article <3502@qiclab.UUCP> jamesd@qiclab.UUCP (James Deibele) writes: >I've never had to deal with their technical support (knock on wood), but I've >been very pleased with the reliability of their 6085 (full-height 72MB drive). >I use this to run a BBS 24 hours a day, which wouldn't be a big deal, except >that I've probably run a gigabyte of mail on it. I would have completely agreed with this statement last week, but unfortunately my 6085 gave out this past Sunday. The drive has been running fine for well over a year as my /usr/spool partition on my unix box. The drive typically gets about 10 meg per day going through it so it has been used quite heavily. A sticker on the drive indicates it has a manufacturing date of April 3, 1986. After spending a few hours trying to get the drive to work again, I finally figured out what had happened to it. If you remove the logic board from the drive, you will notice a small flat cable with two traces on it comming out of the hard drive (the cable ends with a small blue connector). Where the cable enters the hard drive, it runs through a plasic clip which sandwiches a rubber grommet around the cable and the aliminum case. Well, this plastic clip is held together with a torx screw going into the drive. It seems that when this particular drive was assembled, they put a little too much torque on the screw and managed to slightly crack the clip. On Sunday it seems the crack got so severe that the clip broke allowing unfiltered air to enter the hard drive. Obviously the drive stopped working shortly after that had happened. This doesn't say much for the design of the 6085! Why didn't they make such a simple clip out of metal instead of plastic! I now have a completely useless drive and lost all my news because some $0.05 piece of plastic broke. >I would gladly buy Miniscribe drives again. I probably would too but it's definatly not my first choice. -- Mark Dapoz (mdapoz@hybrid.UUCP) ...uunet!mnetor!hybrid!mdapoz I remind you that humans are only a tiny minority in this galaxy. -- Spock, "The Apple," stardate 3715.6. --- * Via MaSNet/HST96/HST144/V32 - UN IBM PC * Via Usenet Newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc