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.

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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!"
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