Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!xanth!nic.MR.NET!shamash!com50!bungia!orbit!pnet51!steve
From: steve@pnet51.cts.com (Steve Yelvington)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: HELP! - Possible Disk Control Chip
Message-ID: <330@orbit.UUCP>
Date: 3 Dec 88 07:05:10 GMT
Sender: root@orbit.UUCP
Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
Lines: 44

keithr@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (U.D.M.) writes:
>My brother's old style 520 has just started acting up.  When writing
>to a disk or creating a new folder the disk directory sector gets
>messed up, I think.  After one of these operations the directory
>looks like garbage.  Some of the "new" file names have
>resembalances(?) to words, characters from the ascii files on the
>disk.  I know its not the disk drives, because I checked them out on
>my 1040.  Could it be a loose disk controller chip? I've heard of
>such things but was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.  Also
>when trying to do a disk copy from one disk to the other, the
>writing disk is not recognized, but the reading drive is.  
>
>Any help is greatly appreciated.
>
>Keith Rast
>keithr@icogem1.ICO.TEK.COM

 
This is basically the behavior I got from my 520ST (mid-1985 serial number)
starting about six months ago. One of the conditions that can contribute to it
is using disks formatted with nonstandard programs (extended formats, for
example). Some of the freeware disk formatters I've used appear to write
identical serial numbers in the boot sector, and TOS looks at serial numbers
as a way of determining whether the disk has been changed. (I have heard that
there is a bug in the TOS function that creates the prototype boot sector, and
that the parameter that tells it to generate a random number doesn't work
properly. My things-to-do list includes writing a program to examine the boot
sector and verify whether that's happening.)
 
The bad news is this: After several months of intermittent flakiness,
including the aforementioned garbage directories, my drive controller died. I
had to ship the ST back to Sunnyvale for replacement. (Please hurry, Atari;
I'm suffering....) 
The good news is that if your brother's ST dies, Atari's replacement policy
(assuming I get the replacement) is quite generous. The swap of my system unit
will cost less than Apple charges for a new Macintosh mouse.

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