Re: [MiNT] Back again

[Mario Becroft <mb@tos.pl.net>]

On Sun, 21 Mar 1999, Guido Flohr wrote:

> Sorry, I haven't answered my mails for quite some time.  I have 
> hardware problems (see below).  I tried to notify you here but
> I made a type in the address, so the mail never arrived. :-(
> 
> Maybe somebody can help me with my hardware problem:
> 
> My internal harddisk is rapidly dying, every time I switch on my
> TT it loses another dozen of sectors.  I bought a Quantum Fireball
> 1080S as a replacement but I can't get it to work.  The Adaptec
> SCSI controller in an Intel box detects the harddisk, I have even
> formatted it with verify.

I'm not a hard-disc expert, so I can't really answer your question.
However I have observed that the Quantum - I think it was a Fireball -
would not boot on a TT. It could be accessed, but it was not possible to
boot from it. This was owing to a lack of support for bus arbitration in
TOS 3.06. (Not being very familair with SCSI I can't say how or why this
comes about.)

> The disk has only five jumpers:
> 
> 	PK

Park, I think, just a unused place to "park" a spare jumper.

> 	TE

Sounds like Termination Enable? Try looking at the Quantum WWW site at
http://www.quantum.com/ as it may contain some information about the
jumper settings.

As for what other drive to get? Well I think just about any will work,
just stay away from the Quantum drives, as these seem to be problematic.
In fact it is only certain models, like the Fireball that have the
problem. I'm using a Quantum 850 MB drive in my TT, I think it is called
Trailblazer and it works very well. I seem to remember that a Quantum
Lightning drive also had the problem, although I'm not sure.

-- 
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| Mario Becroft                * Tariland, New Zealand Atari User Group |
| mb@tos.pl.net                * Atari Hardware Developments            |
| http://www.pl.net/~mario/    * Atari Serial Mouse Interface           |
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