#Syquest drive trouble
11 messages in this thread
Well, I've got my 105Meg Syquest drive. That's the good news. The bad news is
it doens't fit/work. At least, not yet. First, the fit: This is a half height
3.5" unit, and it would almost fit beautifully just under the internal diskette
drive on my A4000, except the IDE disk cable will not reach that far,and I
suspect the front cover is just a little too small. I think I can shave a few
mm's off the front cover, but finding a different IDE cable might be more of a
challenge.
Now for the not working part: The system sort of recognizes it, but SYSINFO
tells me it is a TAPE drive, not a disk. When I run HDTOOLBOX to partition the
cartridge, I go thru the steps of telling it the number of heads, etc, etc, but
when I try to save the changes, I get error -1 on the write.
I'll call Syquest tomorrow, but in the meantime, does anyone have any ideas on
what I might be missing?
Gene,
Can you use HDTOOLBOX to poll the drive, and get the specs from it
(instead of putting them in by hand)? I have noticed that HDTOOLBOX does
things "its own way"; it often, for instance, will play drive geometry
games, and claim that drives have only one head! However, its numbers do
add up, and they work…
//Jonathan,
\\//via AutoPilot
Yes, I can do this, and it does get the correct parameters, but then I get
another message that sez "Not a disk, type 1". Interestingly enought, if I tell
the HDTOOLBOX to verify the drive, it does read the disk. I can see the light
blinking, and the sector counts do increment.
I spoke to Syquest today, and the guy I spoke new there was some kind of
problem with the A4000, and he knew they were working on it, but not much else.
I have to call him back to see if there is a solution.
Gene,
I can't help you with the not working part, but most any store that
carries "clone" hardware should carry the IDE cable. It's the same cable,
unless something has changed with the A4000.
Brian
>Now for the not working part: The system sort of recognizes it, but SYSINF
>tells me it is a TAPE drive, not a disk. When I run HDTOOLBOX to partition
>cartridge, I go thru the steps of telling it the number of heads, etc, etc
>when I try to save the changes, I get error -1 on the write.
Gene,
I have the SCSI version installed in an A3000 (Unless I can get a SCSI card
for my new A4000) and the only was I was able to get the drive to work was to
"force" HDToolbox to recognise the drive…
Try this:
Start HDToolbox
Click on "Change Drive Type"
Click on "Define New"
Click on "Read Configuration"
Make a note of all the stats that are given for the drive.
Try clicking "Ok"
For me this just rebooted the machine (But mine is SCSI, so…)
If it works, you should be all set.
If it doesn't, repeat the steps above, but instead of clicking
on "Read Configuration" enter all the data you recorded about the
drive and click "Ok"
This should get you off & running…
Don Suhr 73117,1337
Yeah, I tried all this, and all variations I could think of. Tried entering by
hand, no luck. Tried reading the drive, sort of worked in that it got the
parameters, but then gave me an error message "not a disk type 1", or words to
that effect.
Did I mention that Sysinfo sez the device is a tape drive?
Don,
you may need to redirect this message to Gene <grin>.
Brian
It probably is the same cable, but the problem is that I need the second drive
connector to be about 4" (or more) away from the first drive connector to reach
the drive. Do you think this is a common cable configuration?
Gene,
initially I thought that these cables did not exist. When I wandered
down to our local "clone" store, the owner had a whole box of them on
hand, so apparently, we are not the only ones that need dual IDE cables.
Brian
Ok, I'll start checking around, IF I can get the thing to work. I shou;ld hear
from Syquest on Monday.