Re: d-i oldworld mac: floppies fail on 4400/200 and 7200/75
Hi!
See comments interleaved below...
Rick
Malte Cornils wrote:
>
> Hi Rick,
>
> On Fri, Apr 09, 2004 at 01:37:21AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > Errors like that are usually symptomatic of a dirty/dusty floppy drive.
> >
> > In particular, if the boot floppy is ejected, it means that the
> > firmware got an error trying to read it, or couldn't find the magic
> > numbers in the magic places that it was expecting from a real-live
> > Macintosh boot floppy.
>
> The boot floppy is ejected after the miboot run (the little icon
> with the penguin) had finished and few more seconds (enough time for
> the kernel to boot and display the usual "insert root disk" message)
> have passed. Floppy ejection at this point is normal and could also
> mean that the kernel boots fine, only that the local console is
> broken.
In my experience, the floppy is *not* automatically ejected when the
"insert root disk" message comes up. I always have to use the
paper-clip trick to get the disk out so I can put the root disk in.
(Again, in my experience) the only time the disk is automatically
ejected is when the firmware has a problem reading it.
This is with two machines -- a beige G3 mini-tower and a PowerMac 6500/225.
>
> > You should clean *both* the drive you will be writing the disk on,
> > and the one you will be reading it on.
>
> That is the second attempt was made on completely unrelated systems
> (both the PC generating the floppy and the Mac were different).
>
> Disk was made apparently without errors, and cmp showed no
> differences. (I was more careful with that after your last mail
> regarding that topic).
That's a good sign. But (as you've seen) not conclusive -- the reading
drive could be dirty (or out of calibration -- which is actually more
serious because the only fix for that is to replace it. It would cost
more to have it recalibrated than the drive's worth.)
>
> > Also, buy a box of new floppies. Don't use floppys that have been
> > sitting around the house for a few years. They accumulate dust
> > over time and the oxide deteriorates.
>
> Yeah, that was when I was shocked how (relatively) expensive floppies
> had become now that almost no one uses them anymore.
Sigh! So true...
>
> I will buy a cleaning set soon,
I think you'll see a dramatic difference when you do. I couldn't get
anything to work at all until I'd cleaned all the drives twice!
> but I would appreciate it if someone
> could test the current images (Holger?) on similar hardware.
I'll test the latest daily-build boot floppies this weekend on both of
my test machines and send you a report.
>
> Yours
> -Malte
>
Enjoy!
Rick
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