🚀 go-pugleaf

in article <4655@ihlpg.ATT.COM>, tainter@ihlpg.ATT.COM (Tainter) says:
> 
> I'm experiencing some odd behaviour with my ATARI SH204 hard disk.
> Does anyone recognize these symptoms:
> 
>     On what seem to be random disk accesses  (reads  AND  writes)  my
>     drive  does what sounds like the initialization procedure it goes
>     through  on  power up and the disk operation fails.   If  I  then
>     redo the disk operation immediately it has no problem.
> 
>     Sometimes I will go for long intervals with  no  occurence  other
>     times I'll take one of these hits every couple of minutes.
> 
>     Also, when the disk gets moderately full (3/4) seeks can take  as
>     long  as  30  seconds and I think i've had some take considerably
>     longer though  I  never  timed  any  longer  than  30.   Is  this
>     reasonable behavior?
> 
> I am trying to get an idea of what the problem may be and if I can fix
> it without having the unit repaired.  To date I have not opened the unit
> to check cable connections and chip seating.  I have checked the external
> cable and it is firmly connected.
> 
> --j.a.tainter

Well, I would suggest that you open the case and try to re-seat any socketed
chips in the drive controller (Atari rule of hardware #1 ;-)).  If that fail
to help (I really don't think that it will), you may have discovered Atari
rule of hardware #2: Never, under any circumstances, allow more (power, 
buffering, current, memory - you pick one ;-)) than absolutely necessary.
It seem to me, after looking at some of the hardware designed by Atari, that
they know very little about power supply design.  In almost all cases, they
have chosen a power supply that will just barely (on a very good day) supply
enough current to drive the given hardware.  It sounds to me like the hard
drive is sensing the power drop-outs, and is attempting to re-initialize.
I could be wrong here, but I would try to get a stronger supply and see
if the problem goes away (any PC power supply will work fine - I've
gotten tired of the Atari power problems and have re-packaged my entire
ST - floppies, hard drive, system board into a PC/XT case plus supply.
This improved the overal performance of my system markedly - no more
unexplained crashes, I don't have to boot it 3 times to get it to come
up once, etc.).  I hope that these suggestions will get your hard drive
back on the right track - no pun intended.

						Myron Drapal
						AT&T Denver
						..!ihnp4!druhi!med