NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/hardware-part1/2513

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 5.6 KB

Path: news.mr.net!usenet
From: [e-mail] (Michael M. Rye)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Some comments on the 1200 and a plea for help
Date: 26 Jan 1996 05:15:30 GMT
Organization: Minnesota Regional Network (MRNet)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <4e9bid$[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.174.166.77
X-Newsreader: THOR 2.22 (Amiga;TCP/IP) *UNREGISTERED*

grrc (Rodger) wrote:

>  A few months ago I was having some problems with my A2000 (there was a
>conflict somewhere and I could not use my memory with my hardrive) so I
>bought a 1200 (I paid $1,000.00 for an acelerated <'020> 1200 with 2 megs
>of chip and 8 megs of fast; it has a 1gig ide hd and a scsi cd drive - it
>seemed like a good deal to me at the time).  I know nothing about the
>1200 and was surprised by a couple of things:

>  1) I can type faster than my keyboard can take it (or my kybd can't
>handle more than 1 key press at a time - it responds <randomly> by either
>duplicating the letter typed previous to the letters struck
>simultaneously or by just not typing either char.

>  2) I have to warm boot my hd - well actually, i gave up and just never
>turn my machine off.

>  3) the power supply is ugly and has cables coming out of _BOTH_ front
>and back and it pretty awkward to deal with (this plays a role later when
>I explain my problem).

>  4) The ribbon cable connection to the (Expansion System) 1gig hd is
>short and difficult to place comfortably out of the way -- this is the
>real cause of my problems!!

>I was adjusting my 1200, pushing it back so I could fit a wrist rest in
>front of it during a download to my COMM: dir and I pushed the
>powersupply off the back of my desk; this dragged my hd over the edge and
>my machine crashed in the middle of a download. I got it back up and running
>(surprisingly) and found many drive errors.
>  I tired correcting them with Quarterback tools but it
>was no help.  I found a copy of DiskSalv2 on my hd (remember, I had
>nothing to do with the setup of the machine as I bought it used).  I
>tried to clean up the errors (and I found some not-completely-deleted
>files that I wanted to restore to see what some of the more expensive
>software was like (the previous owner is the owner of an Amiga shop) and
>I tried to recover it; they were located in the same partition as the my
>COMM: drive and I may have moved some of the problems to other
>partitions.  I kept reducing the number of errors every time I ran
>disksalv2 til I ran into a checksum error - when I ran the routine to fix
>that, I would get hard errors.  Suddenly, all the partitions started
>getting errors andn then my boot partition got errors and now I cannot
>boot from the drive.  To make matters worse, there is no installer disk
>in my little packet of v3.0 software so I am unable to re-load that. With
>out the original disk, I can't use disksalv any more.  The original owner
>lives about 2500 miles away.

>Does anyone know what I can do from here?  Is mys disk trashed? Can I
>save anything from it? Did I pay too much money for what I got (not what
>I ended up with- <grn>)?  There are no known Amiga dealers in the Raleigh
>triangle area. Iknow so little about what I have that I don't even know
>how to get my CD0: cdrom drive to mount.  I can't find any of the disk
>that I should have for the drive (I just recently moved from Tucson AZ
>and we have not completely unpacked yet).


>Rodger
>
>Ps sorry for the long chatty cry for help but....

I'll take these one at a time.

1)  More than likely it is a keyboard problem.  I can often outrun
my keyboard also, as I can type about 110 words per minute on a
good day.  (Lots of practice since I'm a consultant and work with
computers every day.)

2) Warm booting your machine - you can get Workbench v3.1, a program
called "slowboot.lha" (or something similar) from Aminet, or you can
just live with it.  I have to warm boot mine every time I turn it on.
The reason for this is the hard drive does not spin up fast enough to
be recognized by the system on a cold start.  After the drive spins
up and a warm boot, the system is able to find it.

3) The cables on the power supply:  You're just going to have to live
with it, unless you buy a third party supply from somewhere that's
designed differently.  I have a Bigfoot PS for my A1200 and it also
has cables coming out of opposite sides.  My desk is big enough to
handle everything being spread out, though.

4) Not much you can do to extend a ribbon cable.  I wouldn't recommend
it anyway, because it will only cause data errors flowing down the
cable.

   As far as your pushing the drive off your desk along with your
power supply, more than likely the drive probably got bumped somewhere
when it fell, and if it was running at the time (which it sounds from
your text that it was) it's probably trashed (*head crash*).  More
than likely it didn't survive being bumped while running.
You can try backing up the drive to floppies or tape, or whatever and
try to copy off as many files from it as you can.  More than likely
you're going to have to buy a new drive and restore everything to that.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
* -Michael M. Rye- (Jedi) |  Amiga 1200, '030 50 MHz, '882 50 MHz,  *
*   UNIX/C Admin/Design   |___10 MB RAM, 850 MB HD, SupraFAX 28.8___*
*   [e-mail]   |  Amiga  500, 1 chip/2 fast, 2 floppies  *
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
*                        Thought of the Day:                        *
*     Luke, I'm your father . . . Join the Dark Side, you knob!     *
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*