Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!walt.cc.utexas.edu!readdm From: readdm@walt.cc.utexas.edu (David M. Read) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: floppy drive problems Summary: won't format Message-ID: <17348@ut-emx.UUCP> Date: 19 Aug 89 03:04:07 GMT Sender: news@ut-emx.UUCP Reply-To: readdm@walt.cc.utexas.edu (David M. Read) Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas Lines: 26 I have recently acquired a problem with my floppy drives, and was wondering if anyone can suggest any do-it-yourself type fixes. The problem is this: neither drive will format disks; I always get a "system reserve are bad" message, and the format aborts. This happens on both drives, with any disk (even new). The wierd part is that if I Copy2PC a previously formatted disk onto a target and then erase the files, everything is ok. Since both drives started doing this simultaneously, I suspect the problem lies in the floppy controller, but I'm not sure. Could this be just an alignment problem? The machine is a 1984 Leading Edge PC (old, yes. reliable up till now, yes.) Does anybody have any ideas? If all else fails, I'll take it to a repair shop, but us poor starving physics grads are known not for high cash flow but high ability to try anything. Thanks in advance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- David M. Read best -=> readdm@snowwhite.cc.utexas.edu all-else-fails -=> read@physics.utexas.edu "...[he's] stupid and he's ignorant but he's got guts...and guts is enough!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------