My 3B1 FIXDISK 2.0 experience (so far, LONG)

[Chris Rende]

I read in the FAQ (I think) about the free 3B1 FIXDISK 2.0 disks available
from AT&T. Since it is a free upgrade I decided to call AT&T and ask for a
copy.

The first thing that AT&T asked for was my 3B1 serial number. Since I don't
carry that information to work with me I told the person that I'd have to
call back.

That night I started searching for the serial number on the machine. I found
it in the most obnoxious place for it to be - in the exact middle of the
underside of the case. At least it was on the outside of the case. :-)

I didn't want to shut the machine down and turn it upside down just to get
the serial number so I proped it up with my fist and slid a mirror underneath
it. By shining a flashlight into the mirror I was able to see the serial
number (backwards due to the mirror reflection, of course). Anyone who has
ever tried to lift one of these things can appreciate how much fun it was.

The next day I called AT&T again. Be prepared to wait on hold for a while.

This time they took the serial number and my name, address, and phone number.
This registered the machine in my name (I'm the third owner - but no one else
ever registered it).

A few days later the disks and 6 page instruction booklet arrived!

The instructions said to use the UA to load the disk contents and then reboot.
Since this seems a bit risky I decided to "check out" the contents of the
disks before installing them.

I tried all kinds of CPIO invocations on every floppy device I have but I
kept getting read errors. I put a write protect tab on the disk and fed it
to a disk zapper on a PC. I found that the several of the sectors in track
0 were unreadable. Others were OK. (I didn't look much beyond the start of
the disk). Next I checked disk 2 of the set. It seemed to read OK.

By the way, these disks seem pretty cheap: they don't even have hub rings!

Conviced that I had a bad disk, I called AT&T and asked for another copy.
I had to wait for a technician to call me back. After describing the problem
she agreed to send me a new set of disks.

The second set arrived a few days later. Again no hub rings.

Also, again READ ERRORS at the start of the first disk from both the 3B1
and the PC.

-----------------

I wonder if the drive which is creating these disks needs an alignment...

I'm going to compare the list of bad sectors between the two disks and see
if I can piece together a good disk using the good sectors from each.

And, if someone has a good copy of FIXDISK 2.0 for 3.5, could you please
send me a UUENCODE of the first 10K-20K of the first disk?


car.
-- 
Christopher A. Rende           Central Cartage (Nixdorf/Pyramid/SysV/BSD4.3)
uunet!edsews!rphroy!trux!car   Multics,DTSS,Unix,Shortwave,Scanners,StarTrek
 trux!car at uunet.uu.net         Minix,PC/XT,Mac+,TRS-80 Model I: Buy Sell Trade
       "I don't ever remember forgetting anything." - Chris Rende