21 Mar
1999
21 Mar
'99
5:50 p.m.
On Sun, 21 Mar 1999, Tony Duell wrote:
Argh! Would this affect the lights on the front of the drives at all?
The motors start spinning soon after the machine is powered up, but the
drive lights don't come on. Is the drive light activity for standard
drives always the same, relative to motor and/or head activity? (Actually,
I'm pretty sure it's not, but I don't have time to check with all of my
machines right now.)
BTW, the 'Argh!' above is only because I don't have any hard-sectored
disks at all. I've never had a machine that needed any, though I've
always wanted a Northstar Advantage (I used to drool over them in a
local shopping mall when I was a kid, but I was afraid to touch one).
I think the
video hardware must be kaput, _or_ it's not supposed to put
anything on the screen until it boots up. In which case, maybe the disk
drive is hosed because it doesn't seek. I have a drive in a Kaypro that's
like that.
Alternatively it might be waiting for the disk to become ready
(especially if it's expecting a hard sectored disk, it could be waiting
for sector and index pulses). Or the bootstrap might start by reading something off
track 0. Apart from
the initial restore, you'd not see head movement until you gave it a
bootable disk.
I was counting on it seeking to track 0, actually. I moved the head
myself and was hoping it would do something when I powered the thing up.
If the thing is waiting for sector pulses, I'll have to give it some
somehow...
It'd be nice if it'd give some kind of startup message before the drives
are running, though.
-tony
--
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/