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- From: dplatt@ntg.com (Dave Platt)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware,comp.sys.mac.programmer
- Subject: Re: Trouble using old Rodime drive and VCP Syquest removable
- Message-ID: <1992Aug30.192330.12359@ntg.com>
- Date: 30 Aug 92 19:23:30 GMT
- References: <1992Aug28.212258.17618@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>
- Organization: New Technologies Group, Inc. Palo Alto CA
- Lines: 65
-
- >I am having problems using an old Rodime 100Mb internal drive with a
- >new VCP 88Mb removable external drive. There seem to be some weird
- >driver incompatibilities, and some of my files appear to have been
- >corrupted. In particular, the VCP Formatter program, which claims to
- >be compatible with everything under the sun, fails when it tries to
- >install its driver on my internal drive. Also, I've had both my internal
- >drive and an external cartridge have their partition maps go bad for
- >no apparent reason. Has anyone else had similar problems with an old
- >Rodime drive?
-
- The older Rodime drives (e.g. the RO-5000S 5.25" mechanism sold as the
- 100Plus) have a somewhat quirky SCSI interface. Their blind I/O has
- different timing rules than most other mechanisms, and many third-party
- driver packages have difficulty working with these drives. I found, for
- example, that SilverLining was quite unable to work with my RO-5000S
- whether in "blind" or "handshake" mode.
-
- On the other hand... Hard Disk Toolkit, from FWB Software, works
- perfectly well with my Rodime... and it definitely gives better
- throughput (a few percent better) than Rodime's own driver. The same
- driver works beautifully with my Maxtor XT-4380S.
-
- > Any suggestions on what to do about it? I've contacted
- >VCP, Rodime, and Appolyonics (which wrote the VCP driver) and they're
- >all stumped. (P.S. I've run the Rodime disk checker program and the
- >disk checks out fine.)
-
- I've found the Apollyonics driver package to be quite good at "driving"
- most mechanisms, but I haven't tried it with a Rodime.
-
- I've concluded that it's a bad idea to try to use one formatting package
- to change or replace the partition table written by another formatting
- package. Although both packages may use "Inside Mac V" formatting
- rules, there can be some subtle differences between the partition table
- formats, and bad things can happen.
-
- The first thing I'd suggest is that you go back to using the Rodime-
- provided formatting software and driver... I've found them to be quite
- reliable. Back up the drive (twice, to two different sets of media),
- reformat, reinstall, and restore the files. Check your SCSI cabling and
- terminators - make sure that everything is making good contact and that
- the cables are not being bent sharply or placed under tension... this
- can lead to unreliable operation.
-
- You might also want to consider investing in Hard Disk Toolkit. I know
- for a fact that the driver works well with a Rodime 100-meg drive. The
- "Personal edition" sells for about $49. The full-up power-user edition
- costs about $125 (street price), and includes a "World control" program
- which will let you fiddle with the drive's firmware parameters, manually
- spare out bad blocks, etc. I used it to give a complete tuneup to my
- Rodime... I erased the "grown" defect list (about a dozen blocks),
- reformatted using the "factory-identified" defect list, ran an extensive
- surface test, and manually reallocated every block which had any hard or
- soft errors (soft errors being those which could be corrected via the
- EDAC error-correction logic, or by retrying the read). The drive has
- behaved flawlessly since then.
-
- The HDT software comes with a configurable INIT which will let you
- pre-load a driver for your removable disk, so that you'll be able to
- mount cartridges on the drive even if there was no cartridge present in
- the drive at boot time.
- --
- Dave Platt VOICE: (415) 813-8917
- Domain: dplatt@ntg.com UUCP: ...netcomsv!ntg!dplatt
- USNAIL: New Technologies Group Inc. 2468 Embarcardero Way, Palo Alto CA 94303
-