Re: Weird Problem on an old Macintosh
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg40654] Re: [mg40634] Weird Problem on an old Macintosh
- From: "Eric L. Strobel" <fyzycyst at comcast.net>
- Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 03:10:55 -0400 (EDT)
- Reply-to: fyzycyst at mailaps.org
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
on 04/11/03 2:05 AM, Technicians at jeffa at NOSPAM.chem.usyd.edu.au wrote: > This is where I come in; when he referred to me for help. I'm definitely > no expert but I'm no slouch either. I've got a spare floppy drive, an > old working Macintosh Classic I which I use as a diagnostic machine in > such circumstances, the skills/software to test his Mathematica discs > and change the drive over. But, when I put the first of the Mathematica > discs into the drive of the Classic "this disk is unreadable:" etc! nor > can I read any other floppy now either. > > I cannot see how locked 800k floppies can be back written with code to > prevent reinstallation (the way some of those older protection schemes > worked) nor do I believe (as my friend does) that there is malicious > code to 'kill' attempted reinstalls on the discs. But after having two > different machines go belly up with the same discs I am beginning to wonder. Have you checked the physical integrity of the floppy itself? Is the sliding metal cover bent or dinged? If so, it could be damaging any drive you put the disk into. Otherwise, with floppies that old, perhaps the media itself has dirt or perhaps has degraded somewhat and is messing up the read heads. If so, perhaps one of those floppy drive cleaning kits would restore your drive to proper functioning. Perhaps the safest bet would be if someone at Wolfram could arrange for the floppies to be exchanged (assuming you get your drives working again), or perhaps provide you with self-mounting disk images on a CD in exchange for the original floppies. As a general rule, floppies are a perishable media and if they're 10 or so years old, the moment you get one to read, you should immediately make a disk image. Hope that helps. - Eric. -- Eric Strobel (fyzycyst at NOSPAM^mailaps.org) ===================================================================== I like animals. They taste good! =====================================================================