stepping machanism of Apple Disk ][ drive (was Re: Heatkit 5 1/4 floppies)

From: Sellam Ismail <dastar_at_ncal.verio.com>
Date: Fri Apr 9 04:12:00 1999

On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote:

> My contempt for Apple begins and ends with their total disregard for the
> value of your data. If you wrote to their floppies, especially if your
> computer was in the "front room" of a business, exposed to whatever dust was
> carried in by customers and wind, etc, from the parking lot, (I had a client
> years ago, whose mail-order business was operated with the "help" of an
> Apple-II with two controllers and three drives in just such a location.)
> you'd frequently observe the computer locking up because it had come to a
> bit it couldn't read. The reason was probably contamination of media or
> drives, but the only recovery was the reset. Your data, meanwhile, and
> perhaps your customer calling long distance, were gone by now. They
> designed the MAC with no memory parity assuming that you'd not mind if your
> data was corrupted without your knowledge, and though the disk handling was
> a bit more mature than the Apple-II "I give up . . . and die" it wasn't much
> better.

This sounds like poorly written software to me. The only time I've ever
had my Apple ][ lock up because some data couldn't be read from the disk
was because the software told the Apple to lock up. I think your bias is
totally unfounded, or at least founded upon a predisposition to hating the
Apple ][ for some odd reason. Did an Apple employee fart near you or spit
on your car at some point in your life or something?

Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Fri Apr 09 1999 - 04:12:00 BST

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