From: kai@nicedel.north.de (Kai Schlichting)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Scandal: Acorn betrays customers! (:-)
Date: 10 Apr 92 00:34:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: arc.1A+V79j010n
Organization: Archimedes !RUCP Users

osmith@acorn.co.uk (Owen Smith) writes:

> In article <17gHQ9j010n@arc.terminal.nicedel> kai@nicedel.north.de
> (Kai Schlichting) writes:
> 
> >do you know that Acorn betrays you of a good feature on your machine
> >just in order to save a small cable of about 7cm of length with a worth
> >of approximate 0.1 British Pence (= 0.001 British Pounds) ?
> >Greedily, A3000 owners look to the old A310's and see that those machines
> >recognise a diskchange automatically,when the machine wants a specific,
> >already known,named disk (to save/load/whatever from/to it).
> >All what Acorn lacks,is the previously described cable ,which must
> >connect the diskdrive's pin 2 with the main PCB,and that's all
> >with most of the drives.
> 
> This was done for a reason, and it wasn't to save money. Check before you
> flame please! Indeed I've already said all this once before about four
> months ago. The only reason I'm bothering to say it all again is to smother
> yet another silly anti Acorn flame war.

I dont read this newsgroup since more than 3 weeks,and dont think it's a FAQ.

> 
> The A400/1, A540 and A3000 have different drives to the older machines. The
> older drives assert "disc changed" without doing anything mechanical, you
> just have to twiddle another line called "reset disc changed". So it can be
> polled quite quickly and indeed that's what ADFS does - ten times a second.
> On the newer drives, "reset disc changed" doesn't work. ADFS spots this and
> realises that instead it needs to step the head. However it still does it
> quickly, ten times a second, so it sounds absolutely dreadful and frightens
> the life out of naive users as the head rams agains the end stop ten times a

Haven't noticed it ramming against the end! it merely seems to do quick
back&forth-steps towords the end..and then remains quiete,because the drive
noticed having it's heads at the end -> no more movement! -> silence!

> second. This was discovered after RISC OS 2 was in ROM, so a work around was

How easy is it to have a rom changed for such a little bug ?
PC clones producers do that once in a day...(hence the probs with pc's (:-))

> sort and found - not include the disc changed line in the cable. ADFS
A friend even got a machine with the cable *cut through* ....

> notices that "disc changed" doesn't work at all and so gives up on the idea.
> 
> RISC OS 3 polls the drives slowly (once a second) if it needs to step the
> head to get "disc changed" to work - watch the disc light on an A5000 blink
> once a second when it is looking for a disc. This feature will also work
> with A400/1, A540 and A3000 machines if you change the cable when you
> install RISC OS 3.
I in no way plan to infringe Acorn's copyrights,but would you ,Acorn, try
to prevent me spreading a hacked version of ADFS modules with the 10t/s poll
reduced to a 1t/s ??? (:-)...because all german arc owners will have this
'new' feature installed soon ; /w or /wo my help.

> 
> Next time why don't you ask WHY before you rev up the flame thrower?
because the flame thrower is so nice to brush down Acorn...and right
the tool to release anger&hatress aroused after having discoverd such
a nice feature *cut* and *not* mentioned in the manuals....(:-)
at least the PRM should contain such info for the 'educated' users.
(and should contain much more info then right now- f.ex. how the
buffering works with file sys's---and if it's worth being called
'buffering' at all (;-) )

bye,Kai.

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