

Article 34735 of comp.sys.mac:
From: [email-masked] (Alexis Rosen)
Subject: Re: Dead 40 MEG Drives - This could be really bad.
Date: 11 May 89 22:39:22 GMT
Organization: City College of New York

This could be a very serious issue, of at least as much concern as the faulty
power supplies in the Mac 512/Plus, or it might not. But I'm concerned because
Quantum has a history... read on.

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Jeff Parke) writes:
>After seeing the second replacement 40 MEG drive put in an SE/30 in a
>month, and hearing about similar problems from others I work with, I
>though it would be interesting to query the net about the prevalence
>of this problem.
>
>The symptoms:
>
>The HD select light on your SE/30 (or other SE) blinks in a different-
>than-normal way when you turn the unit on.  You may hear a "clicking"
>sound of the HD head moving once or twice.  You won't hear the normal
>sound of the disk spinning.  You can boot the machine from a floppy after
>the boot software gives up on reading the HD.  HD Setup and other SCSI
>software cannot find the HD at all.
>
>The problem:
>The HD is not spinning.
>
>One "cure":
>You deliver a small physical shock to the machine and the HD spins
>up and everything proceeds normally.  Or if it is really stuck, you warm the
>computer up to 80 or 85 degrees and then it responds to a "kick start".
>
>If you have had these kinds of problems with internal SE hard discs, please
>write me directly at address below.  I will summarize for the net in a few
>weeks.
>
>...uw-beaver!pilchuck!phred!jeffp {Jeff Parke}

Okay, here's the history. Apple used Quantum's 5.25" 40MB and 80MB drives
in 1987 and 1988. So did lots of third-party companies, such as Jasmine and
CMS.

One or more manufacturing runs of the 80MB unit (Q280) were defective. The
problem was that grease would drip down onto the spindle of the drive, and
when the drive was powered down for a while the grease would solidify. This
caused exactly the same symptoms that Jeff described above, and was amenable
(for a period of time) to the same solution. Eventually, things got so bad
the drive couldn't be "kick-started" at all, at any temperature.

Quantum recalled many units from CMS and probably from many other companies
as well (though I only know for sure about CMS). They did NOT, however, make
the recall public, and it only applied to drives not yet resold to dealers
or end-users.

I have had to return a number of these drives for service. Recently, CMS
started screwing around, and when I inquired further I found out about the
recall. I called Quantum and they refused to replace the unit free, even
though it was known defective and they had issued a recall on that entire
run. Needless to say, I was not pleased by that.

Now the new 3.5" Quantum Pro-80 and Pro-40 seem to be quite good, but if they
are susceptible to the same problem as the older 5.25" units, I don't want
to have anything to do with them. To adapt an old phrase, screw me once and
it's bad luck, but screw me twice and I'll never buy from you again...

So I too am very very interested in the results of this survey. Since Jeff
is doing one already, mail to him, not me, and when he posts his summary
we'll know a little more.

Let's hope it's not so bad- there are LOTS of those quantums out there...

---
Alexis Rosen
alexis@ccnysci.{uucp,bitnet}
[email-masked]  (last resort)