Subject: Disk drive issue

From: Owen Brand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 21:32:24 -0700 (PDT)

Okay.... so my 3.5 drives are working great.  No surprise there...
 
Here's the issue... no matter what disk I try to BACKUP using the DM2 cart, it throws an error when trying to read my 5.25s.  This is strange, as I'm able to catalog and list each disk just fine from the DM2 cart reading DSK1 (my standard full height TI-issue floppy).  I'm attempting to back up some of my programs that lie in 5.25-land and it's just not working with me...  Is it probably that my 5.25 drive is failing me?  I do have another one in the garage, but it is untested and has not been used in over 25 years...  I'm afraid that I may be damaging my disks and don't really want to go on trying out other disks if the drive is faulty.  All I need is to lose all my old game projects and unique old software packages.....  
 
Any tests I can run?  You guys have any ideas?  
 
Right now I'm trying to make a copy of MFM for a guy... I want to make a 3.5 backup and then write the 5.25s from that.... but for some reason, my 5.25 is being fickle right now...  =(

Owen

---

From: Owen Brand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 21:36:43 -0700 (PDT)

So... I KNOW this MFM disk is good... or was before today... However when I just went to catalog it, it said that the disk was NOT INITIALIZED.... Problem..... big problem.  
 
When I tried to copy it earlier, it read the first file and then threw an error, so I KNOW there is or WAS something there just minutes ago... now it's NOT INITIALIZED?

Owen

________________________________
From: Owen Brand <[email-masked]>
To: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]> 
Sent: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 10:32 PM
Subject: [TI994A] Disk drive issue

Owen

---

From: "Tursi" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 22:14:09 -0700

My first thought here is to check drive termination - I assume the 3.5" 
drive is a recent addition?

There must be one and only one drive with termination on the floppy cable, 
and it must be the last drive on the chain. When you have too many 
terminators, not enough, or in the wrong place, you basically end up getting 
random failures. (Of course, if that is so, another test might be to remove 
the 3.5" drive and just see if the problems go away - or format the same 
floppy again and see if the results are different - just to prove unreliable 
behaviour.)

According to the notes I took some time ago, 3.5" drives tend to handle the 
termination, meaning you should remove it from any 5.25" drives on the same 
cable. ( http://harmlesslion.com/text/ti_35_inch_floppy.txt )

If you aren't sure about the terminator packs let me know, and I'll find 
some photos. I've been looking at Google without much luck so far. ;)

-----Original Message----- 
From: Owen Brand
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 9:32 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [TI994A] Disk drive issue

Here's the issue... no matter what disk I try to BACKUP using the DM2 cart, 
it throws an error when trying to read my 5.25s.  This is strange, as I'm 
able to catalog and list each disk just fine from the DM2 cart reading DSK1 
(my standard full height TI-issue floppy).  I'm attempting to back up some 
of my programs that lie in 5.25-land and it's just not working with me... 
Is it probably that my 5.25 drive is failing me?  I do have another one in 
the garage, but it is untested and has not been used in over 25 years... 
I'm afraid that I may be damaging my disks and don't really want to go on 
trying out other disks if the drive is faulty.  All I need is to lose all my 
old game projects and unique old software packages.....

Right now I'm trying to make a copy of MFM for a guy... I want to make a 3.5 
backup and then write the 5.25s from that.... but for some reason, my 5.25 
is being fickle right now...  =(

Owen

---

From: Marc Hull <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 09:40:36 -0700 (PDT)

When was the last time you cleaned your drive ?

--- On Tue, 6/4/13, Owen Brand <[email-masked]> wrote:

From: Owen Brand <[email-masked]>
Subject: [TI994A] Disk drive issue
To: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tuesday, June 4, 2013, 11:32 PM

  

 

Owen