I also used
the Drive ][ primairly stacked next to my Apple ][+, with
the monitor on top, or on a shelf just above (when I moved to a color
TV with line in as a monitor, as it was just too heavy to safely place
on top of the Apple). I never had problems (other than speed issues,
or once a game wrote high scores to the disk despite being write
protected).
You're write protect sensor broke off somehow. This happened to me once,
and occasionally I'll get a drive that has this problem. Relatively easy
to fix.
I don't think it broke off, but malfunctioned (or somehow, the software
hit a glitch that managed to override it, if that is possible).
I had been playing the game for hours, and each time it tried to write
the high score, it would think it wrote, but when the high score board
was shown, nothing was saved. Then on one occasion, it actually wrote to
it (confirmed that it wasn't just stored in memory as I still have the
write protected disk to this day with my high score saved on it). The
following game rounds it went back to failing to actually write to the
disk.
That was literally, the ONLY occasion that the drive in question ever
pulled that trick, so I doubt anything was "broken" on the drive, just
that it malfunctioned the one time.
It has been a head scratcher for me ever since. I never knew if it was a
sensor malfunction, or if somehow the software overrode the drive's write
protect (which for some nagging reason I thought was possible, as I
thought I had non writeable disks [one with no notch at all] that could
be written to to register software... but I might be wrong on that). My
other (and more plausable theory) is that my write protect sticker had
enough play in it, that a physical switch sensor might have been right on
the verge of writeable (although, I don't know if those drives used a
finger as a sensor, or a light beam, or how far a finger has to pass thru
the disk to see it as writable)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
