>I never had problems as you describe, nor have I ever heard of anyone
>needing to adjust the alignment of an Apple disk drive.
>
>As far as I know, there is no procedure in the Disk ][ manual for aligning
>a drive, and as far as I know, there is no reason for needing one.
I don't know if it was alignment (I think it was speed), but I had a
program that you would run, and you would adjust the drive via a small
pot IIRC until the program said it was correct (again, I think it was
speed).
I DO know that as my Drive ][ drives got older, I found I had to do this
operation more and more to keep them functioning (when it needed
adjustment, it would just fail to read a disk).
I also used the Drive ][ primairly stacked next to my Apple ][+, with the
monitor on top, or on a shelf just above (when I moved to a color TV with
line in as a monitor, as it was just too heavy to safely place on top of
the Apple). I never had problems (other than speed issues, or once a game
wrote high scores to the disk despite being write protected).
My company had a number of Apple II+'s with drive II's stacked on the
Apple with the monitor on top of the drives, and non ever had a problem.
I used an Apple IIe with a dual drive box that sat on top of the Apple,
and the monitor (IIRC, greenscreen Apple branded) sat on top of the
drives. Never had a problem with that setup. (and the previous owner only
ever used it that way for years, and had no problems).
And I am probably a good test of real world abuse to the Apple Drive ][
drives, as I was just a wee child, and I didn't follow any rules that I
probably should have. (I always put the disk in the drive, closed it, and
turned on the computer... I would pull disks out, and replace them while
the drive was reading or writing, I would power off the computer or reset
it during read/write, I didn't use dust sleaves, I touched the disk media
directly, wrote with ball point pens on the disk labels AFTER putting
them on the disk, I used cheap no name brand bulk disks of any kind, and
used a hole punch to make them double sided... and at one point, even
stapled a peice of paper to a disk... and that staple is the ONLY time I
can think of that I screwed up a disk... two holes and a long dent will
do that. So I would have to say, the Apple II disk system was pretty
freakin' stable and reliable to put up with all my abuse)
-chris
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Received on Thu Nov 08 2001 - 12:12:31 GMT