From: dwebster@optima.UUCP (Dave E. Webster Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: *WEIRD* floppy drive error...
Date: 22 Dec 92 21:36:04 GMT

John Fiskio-Lasseter writes:

> I'm wondering if anyone has ever run into this problem before, and if so, 
> has anyone ever found a solution:  In the last three weeks, three PC's -- 
> a pair of 486SX machines and a 286 -- have come into our repair shop with 
> an identical problem.  The 3.5"/1.44 meg drive will not read high-density 
> disks.  It reads 720K disks without a problem.  It reads 1.44M disks, but 
> only when they are write-protected.  If not, the drive will crap out 
> ("GENERAL FAILURE READING DRIVE A:", etc.), and the FAT and BOOT sectors 
> of the disk are destroyed (interestingly, ViruSafe reports that the disks 
> are infected with Michelangelo, although they are most certainly not).

John,

   I have recently had the same problem.  My system has a micronics
motherboard with 2 ESDI drives and dual 5-1/4" & 3-1/2" floppy drives and I
have had the same problem ever since I installed Stacker 3.0 on my hard
disks.  I did check for virii and found none (both Central Point's CPAV and
McAfee's SCAN).  I know that the 3-1/2" drive was working immediately prior
to the upgrade since I used it to back up my system data on HD floppies
without any problems (required over 25 floppies).  After the error first
appeared (within hours of the installation) I disassembled the system and
checked the cables and the boards to make sure they were seated properly,
which they were.  I checked the 5-1/4" drive with a diagnostic battery as
well as both physical hard disks, again without any errors.  Since the ESDI
card drives both floppies as well as the hard disks I assumed that it
probably wasn't the floppy ribbon cable, so I put a new 3-1/2 drive into the
system, but the same problem appeared.  I began to suspect that stacker may
have caused the problem (see below), but booting from a clean floppy disk in
drive A: didn't eliminate the errors, so I began to suspect the controller
card, even though the 5-1/4" drive doesn't have any problems with 1.2MB (HD)
disks.  Now I wonder...

   I am not sure that Stacker is the cause; I never had any problems with vs
2.0 and I have booted the system from a clean floppy (in the 5-1/4 A: drive)
without Stacker or any other TSR and still get sporadic results, although
it does work sometimes.  I tried to call STAC to get some technical support;
I was told I would have to either (1) hold on the phone for at least 45 minutes
until a tech could talk to me (my dime, my time, long distance), (2) fax the
problem to STAC in which case I could expect a reply in four or five days,
(3) call their BBS and report the problem (my dime, same turnaround time as
the fax), or (4) subscribe to compu$erve and try to get help through their
account (turnaround time unknown, but probably two or three days).  None of
these options particularly thrilled me after having just bought the upgrade.
I like the product, but I expect better support than this.  I have removed
the /ems switch from the stacker driver but it didn't help (it did fix some
other incompatibilities I found, however).  Note that in addition to the
stacker driver I have a logitech mouse driver (6.12), QEMM 6.01, ANSI-UV
(an ansi driver), smartdrv, 4dos 4.01, and kstack (the 4dos keyboard stacker)
installed, most loaded into high memory.

   If anyone has any solutions, advice, recommendations, inside knowledge,
or spare cash they would care contribute, please do 8->

Dave