🚀 go-pugleaf

yo all!  can someone help out on this ? pls post to this chap at
negcjfk@ibm.net. 

thanks a million.
=== felix eng ===



From: negcjfk@ibm.net
To: englf@singnet.com.sg

Subject: Floppy drive problems

I read a recent post of your in the newsgroups and you sounded like you know
what you 
are talking about.  Therefore, I took the chance that you may be able to take
a minute 
and help me resolve some problems were having with a floppy disk.  IBM tech
support has 
not been helpful.  Here is the gist of the problem:

Machine: (Pentium, 90 MHz, 24 RAM, two hard drives, one floppy 3.5", no
compression, 
not networked).  Specifically, we are suddenly  having trouble accessing
floppy 
diskettes. 

1. The system has been in operation since June of 1995 with no apparent
 problems with the floppy drive.  The other day I was performing a search of 
some older floppy disks for a particular document I had written a couple years
 ago.  Because disk reads are always been slow under presentation manager,
 I usually perform such searches in a DOS or OS/2 window, using the A:\dir 
commmand. While doing this, I noticed that the contents of one disk apparently
matched the contents of the current disk in the drive.  I put in another disk
and
 typed Dir.  That disks contents was again the same to an earlier disk that
had 
045 error, - cannot find sector requested.  At this point, I couldn't make the
error dialog go away no matter what option I choose.  After repeated efforts 
and hitting the ctrl-esc combination a few times, I was able to bring up the 
end program dialog which said A: drive is not responding to the system, etc, 
etc. do you want to end it?  I did and then my entire desktop went away and 
was then recreated after about 20 seconds.  I recreated the problem using the 
drive object for the floppy.  Whatever the contents is of the first disk you 
access, susbsequent reads will reflect that instead of the true contents of
the 
disk currently in the drive.

2. When the pentium is first booted, it seems to read a good a floppy, but
only
 once.  For example, iF you ask it to read a fresh pre-formatted floppy then 
every floppy after that will read empty whether they are empty or not.  It is
the
n sometimes possible to get out of this by opening other directories on the
hardrives 
and then trying the A: drive again.  Perhaps by doing this we are flushing out
some 
sort of 'cache' that remembers the contents of the disk in the floppy drive? 
Further 
testing has confirmed that after the machine first boots up it will always
read a good 
floppy correctly.  Putting a new floppy in after and then accessing it either
by the 
drive object or the command line displays the contents of the first diskette,
and then 
you may be caught in the loop witrh the sys0045 error dialog popping up.  You
sometimes 
can shut the 0045 error dialog down if you put the first floppy back in the in
the 
drive. 

3. ometimes we get sys0279 - extended attribute errors.

4. Another weird thing is that if a file is copied to a fresh floppy disk on
the
 Pentium, that disk is sometimes rendered unusuable in the 486.  The opposite 
is sometimes true as well.  Sometimes if a file is erased on a disk in the 486
 and then brought to the pentium the file still shows up on the disk, however
 the reverse is not always true.  However, sometimes if a file is copied to a
 floppy on the Pentium and subsequently erased, and then the disk is placed in
 the 486 and a file copied to it, the file does not get written to the floppy,
although DOS says that it was (no sound comes from the drive indicating that 
something has been written.  Putting a new floppy in the 486 and copying the 
same file will work however. We do not feel the problem lies with the 486 as 
it works fine with any disk as long it hasn't had OS/2 copy files to it.  
And that does'nt always cause problems. Floppies have always freely switched
 between the two machines the past. 

5. The most irritating symptom of this problem is when the floopy disk is
 continully accessed every five or ten seconds.  In this case, either the 
sys0045 message keeps popping up which for some reason disables the mouse
 until you press return, or the drive light just comes on every few seconds as
 the drive attempts to read the floppy.

The above has not always been the case, OS/2 has worked for eight months or
 so without floppy disk problems, now suddenly???  Can anybody help?  I hope 
we don't have to reinstall of the operating system from the CD.  We do have
the
 operating system backed up to tape from an earlier time when the system 
appeared to be functioning normally.  Would a tape reinstall of certain
directory
 of the operating system do the trick or should we just recopy the tape file
over
 the operating system overall. Please help!!!!!!

Jon Kaminsky




//----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Jon F. Kaminsky, Principal Hydrogeologist
// Northwest Environmental Geosciences Co.
// 2522 North Proctor Street, Suite 135
// Tacoma, Washington 98406
// Tele: 206-76