I turned on the disk error reporting from the service disk, and when i get the write error now, it shows the address as 00000001 so its the very first write it is failing on each time..
Bearing in mind the drive still appears to format ok, and that i had no previous problems with it, do you think this write error is the drive, or the controller, or the software mis reporting it?
Not a good sign. Bad drive or SCSI->MFM adaptor. The error reporting being turned on is key, the format utility itself ignores most other errors except a bad sector 0.
any help appreciated, or i'm going to be reduced to manually loading the system software from floppy disks everytime i want to use the damn thing, which will be a real pain as i do use the 9100 almost on a daily basis.
Those Miniscribe drives are lucky they spin up at all anymore. Most likely its the drive. I have a pile of bad MFM drives from 9100's - the Seagates all suffer from stiction, the Miniscribes media starts failing (or the platter motor can't maintain accurate speed anymore)... SInce you've already upgraded to the version 5.0 ROMs, get a used SCSI drive off eBay and replace it. Plugs right into the SCSI controller you already have, just remove the SCSI->MFM adaptor mounted on the drive cage. Much simpler design and one fewer point of failure. Note that if you plan on using the Editor (with a keyboard/monitor) you'll need to stick below somewhere around a 400MB drive. Theres a rollover bug where the free-space calculation is not accurate with larger disks. I believe the largest drive I have in any of my 9100's from Fluke is 320MB. I usually try and get one of the 1/2" height Quantums (like a LPS series), eBay usually has a selection of cheap pulls from old Macs. I do have a good used Miniscribe or two if anyone needs an "original" setup. No warranty of course, but its not DOA. _______________________________________________ Techtoolslist mailing list Techtoolslist@flippers.com http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/techtoolslist