[Coco] FD-205 2nd drive bug ??

[Willard Goosey]

>From: "Charlie" <chazbeenhad at hotmail.com>
>Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 12:27:13 -0400


>A while ago, I found a document that said if you had a 2nd  fd-502 drive
>there was some sort of bug and jumpers needed to be moved on the 2nd drive
>for more reliability. For the life of me I can't find this documant anywhere
>now!

Ahh, yes.  I remember this one, because it worried me.

The problem was that the Tandy 2nd drive upgrade was set up
incorrectly, in that only the currently selected drive (say, one
you're reading a file off of) is spinning.  DECB and OS-9 assume that
if one drive is spinning, they all are.  

So, if you were copying a file, for instance, it would read off the
first drive, then select the second one and *immediately* start
writing, without waiting for it to spin up.  Boom, crashed disk.

To see if you have the problem, stick disks in both drives.  "DIR" one
and then the other.  If both spin on both reads, you're fine.

I also put a PC 360K drive in my fd-502 box and didn't have this
problem. 

If you do have this problem... Ask about jumper settings.  It'll
depend on the make/model of your drives.

Willard
-- 
Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
Socorro, New Mexico, USA
"I've never been to Contempt!  Isn't that somewhere in New Mexico?"
   --- Yacko