[CoCo] 720kb vs 1.4mb 3.5" disks

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/10/03 11:11:03 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
rtaylor at bayou.com writes:

> God forbid anyone ever hit RESET on a PC, right?  It could damage the hard 
>  drive, right?  Well, sure... about 20 years ago the HD heads just sat 
right 
>  down on the surface if you killed the power, but ever since the dinos 
>  roamed, hard drives are quite smart devices that always react promptly and 
>  safely to a loss of power.

True.  But even hitting the RESET button should not cause a problem, even on 
the old ST-225 drives I use on my Coco3, that have to be "parked" by typed 
command before cutting the power.  Any PC with a RESET button can be re-booted 
(usually) without cycling the AC power, except in really stubborn cases.

And it's true that newer HDs, like the 40 NB I have on the MM/1, self-retract 
the heads upon power loss.

>  IT'S WINDOWS that throws the scare on you when 
>  you reboot, because it KNOWS it was not shut down properly, so it goes 
>  through this whole mess of hard drive scanning and file verifying.

Yes, and Linux insists on the same thing if not properly exited.  And that 
includes using Ctrl-Slt-Delete too.  Only OS-9 is capable of booting right back 
up after a power-down or reset.

 >  I have also had to pull the cord on my laptop way 
>  too many times (running Windows 98, mind you).

Sometimes we have to snap the battery out of my wife's laptop (Win 2000).  
And it hasn't hurt the HD.

 >  My general rule:
>  If you know a few dinosaur scare stories, try not to pass them along to 
the 
>  people using modern technology if you can help it...

Amen!  Better yet, try to *understand* the mechanics behind the scare story, 
so you can figure out whether it still applies.

BTW, every Coco owner knows not to kill power without unclamping any floppies 
in the drives, right?  I still remember the salesman demonstrating a PC Jr 
telling me "This is a REAL computer, you don't have to worry about that anymore."
--Mike K.