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Date: Sun 13-Sep-1989 18:45:10 From: Unknown Subject: Failed Optical Drive My optical disk drive won't mount any disks any more; I guess it's broken. I suspect that possibly it is dust-related, since everything else is fine, and the machine hadn't even rebooted or been powered down since the last time the OD worked. The symptoms are: if you put in a disk (or ask for "Mount" from the work space), it accepts the disk, starts to wind up the motor (the familiar whine), it clunks once or twice, then the motor winds back down. This cycle repeats indefinitely, trying again after each time the drive winds down. There is no way to interrupt it short of hitting double-command-` and typing "ej" to the monitor (which seems to work fine). I have pulled out the optical drive, looked at it, tried to blow dust from it, etc. I have not disassembled the drive itself, out of fear. There was no change in behavior when I put the cube back together. I installed system 0.981 a few weeks back, but I have no reason to believe that this is related, since the OD worked fine during and after the upgrade. Has this happened to anybody else? Is there anything I can do about it, short of taking it in for repair? Thanks, Glenn Reid Adobe Systems greid@adobe.COM >From: avie@wb1.cs.cmu.edu (Avadis Tevanian)
Date: Sun 14-Sep-1989 19:34:05 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Failed Optical Drive In article <6141@pt.cs.cmu.edu> eht@f.word.cs.cmu.edu (Eric Thayer) writes: >In article <1183@adobe.UUCP> greid@adobe.COM (Glenn Reid) writes: >>The symptoms are: if you put in a disk (or ask for "Mount" from the >>work space), it accepts the disk, starts to wind up the motor (the >>familiar whine), it clunks once or twice, then the motor winds back >>down. This cycle repeats indefinitely, trying again after each time >>the drive winds down. > >A guy in our group had this same problem. It turned out that his media was >bad and, for some reason, the optical was trying to reach some state that it >couldn't because the media was bad. Have you tried a different od? > >-- >Eric H. Thayer School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon >(412) 268-7679 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 I've had a rather extensive experience with this particular problem. I bought my cube last Feb (optical only), and a month later the spinup-spindown problem showed up. The campus service center swapped the drive out, and everything worked fine for a couple of months and then...It Happened Again. Took the cube in, swapped the drive out, no problem. A month later, I bought a Wren V and became happy as a clam with the improved speed and storage in the cube. Well, about two months later, I noticed the optical drive would spin the disk up and down and back up before it would mount the inserted optical. Being paranoid I complained loudly to the PNW marketing rep, and he assured me that if anything died, NeXT would take care of it. Sure enough, two weeks later the drive failed again with the spinup spindown symtoms. Ah, I think. Bond, James Bond once said "Once is accident, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action". I called the PNW rep again, and the drive was swapped out the next day along with my motherboard. A few days later an engineering type from next called me and asked about a half-hours worth of questions about the physical environment around the cube. No dice; we got average power quality, not much dust, humidity is controlled sorta. hmmm. The problem was traced to a defective batch of laser diodes that Canon bought. Didn't affect too many drives, but oh my, were the QC thoughts flowing. Turns out that the diode junction failed slowly, and the reduced power output caused the drive mechanism to loose the tracking focus on the inserted disk. I've used my third drive now for three months with no problems whatsoever (under intensive use), and NeXT placed my machine under extended warrantee until the end of 1989 to placate my fears. 'nuff said. kean Lothar Kaul >From: gjunell@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Gregorio Cortez)
Date: Sun 14-Sep-1989 20:14:05 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Failed Optical Drive In article <1183@adobe.UUCP> greid@adobe.COM (Glenn Reid) writes: >The symptoms are: if you put in a disk (or ask for "Mount" from the >work space), it accepts the disk, starts to wind up the motor (the >familiar whine), it clunks once or twice, then the motor winds back >down. This cycle repeats indefinitely, trying again after each time >the drive winds down. We had a drive die of the same symptoms. The drive spun up and down util someone had the sense to turn it off, and it wouldn't accept any flopticals after that point. We contacted Next and they Fed Expressed a new drive to us. The explanation was a single batch of drives had a bad part. Greg gjunell@polyslo.calpoly.edu Next Administrator >From: greid@adobe.com (Glenn Reid)
Date: Sun 14-Sep-1989 20:28:58 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Failed Optical Drive In article <6141@pt.cs.cmu.edu> eht@f.word.cs.cmu.edu (Eric Thayer) writes: >A guy in our group had this same problem. It turned out that his media was >bad and, for some reason, the optical was trying to reach some state that it >couldn't because the media was bad. Have you tried a different od? It wasn't the media, unfortunately. Thanks for all of your responses about my optical drive problem. I got the drive replaced, which should fix it. Apparently some of the very early disk drives had some problems, but the new one is supposed to be much more robust. Glenn Reid Adobe Systems >From: gerrit@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Gerrit Huizenga)
Date: Sun 15-Sep-1989 20:39:38 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Failed Optical Drive >We had a drive die of the same symptoms. The drive spun up and down util >someone had the sense to turn it off, and it wouldn't accept any flopticals >after that point. We contacted Next and they Fed Expressed a new drive to >us. The explanation was a single batch of drives had a bad part. Mine just died right this week with the same symptoms. As it turns out, I bought my cube just about 4 months ago. And, I am very glad that NeXT decided to replace it---warrany or no warranty. Needless to say that one is never happy about broken equipment, but I am really fond of NeXT's policy of dealing with this problem. (Remember years ago, the first IBM AT hard disks would all fail? And, as far as I remember, if you were out of warranty, you were also out of luck.) This is how to build up goodwill! /ivo >From: eht@f.word.cs.cmu.edu (Eric Thayer)
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