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From: cabbie@chinet.UUCP (Richard Andrews)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Hard Disk Problem {BIZZARE}
Message-ID: <1014@chinet.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Jan-87 16:20:44 EST
Article-I.D.: chinet.1014
Posted: Sun Jan 11 16:20:44 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Jan-87 06:35:53 EST
Reply-To: cabbie@chinet.UUCP (Richard Andrews)
Distribution: world
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 37




	A friend of mine called me last night with a problem that is
interesting.  He had just bought a SH204 hard disk drive and found that
whenever he wrote to the hard disk he would munge the directory.  He can read
files ok and is using rev 8 software for the harddisk.  

I had him bring his console and drive over and found that with his console he
indeed did munge the directory.  With my console everything was OK though.
We replaced the DMA chip, and the 1772 to no avail and have run out of 
ideas.  His machine is a 1 meg 520 with piggybacked chips (both installed
by me) and TOS is in ROM.  My machine has the modulator and his doesn't,
not that it makes any difference.  Memory checks out ok on both machines
so i have to assume that memory is ok.  Could the ROM routines be bad 
due to a hardware problem (bad solder joint) or am I barking up the wrong
tree?  What else could it be?  Both the MMU and GLUE are -20 revisions.

BTW when he wipes out a directory and then you read it the whole system
locks up with no mouse icon and then about 4 seconds later the screen
turns to vertical stripes!  Bizarre!  Its kind of like filling screen
memory with $01 from SID.  After that the system re-boots.  When the 
directory is munged in this fashion and you try to read it with a 
good console the same thing happens.  I never thought that a directory
could wipe out the system.  That would make for a interesting copy-
protection scheme.  Read too much of the directory and BOOM!  
I have also seen the directory turn into all 'SSSSSS'.  Real wierd
disk usage amounts too.  Something like "1 )9 (8530(  * bytes free".

	Any ideas anyone?  Allen?  Neil?  


-- 
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Any opinions expressed above are my own.        Rich Andrews
 They can be yours too.  Please send $19.95 to.....ihnp4!chinet!cabbie
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