+3 disks (writing errors)
is there any way to check a disk for bad sectors? i seem to get I/O errors of one type or another when writing to disks. the thing is the disks format okay and i can write to them, but i will get an error at some stage and as a result some disks are unreliable. i was told a new belt was fitted to the disk drive and some disks i have no trouble with.
Post edited by freddyhard on
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Well I suppose it was an obvious thing to try, which is why I tried it, of course. But I wasn't necessarily expecting it to work. I thought it may have needed a symbol with it or a drive letter or something as well.
Well the +3 that I have now is quite a recent purchase. Back in the spectrum days a +3 is what I had, but that one and all the stuff went a long time ago.
My new +3 was recently bought from ebay, it was the cheapest one I could find. I thought to myself, doesn't matter if the floppy drive doesn't work, I've got no disks anyway, but I do have a DivIDE+, so who needs a floppy drive? Well it turns out at the moment that I do, as the DivIDE+ does not work on it. It now seems likely that the reason it doesn't work is because a previous owner has "modified" it in some way. There are components soldered onto the bottom of the board, I have no idea what they're for, but others here say they shouldn't be there. I think the floppy drive probably needs a new rubber band, but disks are pretty rare anyway. I'm going to concentrate on getting teh DivIDE+ to work. At some point in the future I will get the floppy drive fixed too though.
i'll have to read a bit more into the DivIDE+. seems like the way to go, but i'm starting to get tight with money. i remember buying the 48K rubber keys back in '83 and then upgraded to the +2. i never sold the +2, but it got thrown out just recently so i bought a +3 on ebay.
Thanks for that. The DivIDE+ certainly isn't cheap, and unless you are pretty good with computers I wouldn't say it is the most inuitive thing to use, but it's not hard either, just takes a bit of getting used to. All I will say is that when they work they are great. I think their greatest failing, if you like, is the fact that they have to be coupled to a 20+ year old computer that may have its own "issues", so it doesn't always amke a happy marriage.
but if some diskettes work perfectly, its reasonable to assume the problem is in those bad ones. they do wear out. dust, for eg, can be a problem as it gets inside them and cleaning mechanism can't handle all of it. you could clean fdd head with ipa.
just use some blank diskette when testing.
btw, andy is probably right.
i got some more disks, so i'll try again with some of them. if persists i'll look at changing the belt. i'll post back some time when i'm fully awake.
i just replaced the belt and things seem to be working better, although some disks are getting CRC errors. what was on it was a rubber band - which to me is similar to someone using a pair of tights for a fan belt.