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Trouble with Microdrive
Microdrive doesn't work well.

New MessageTrouble with Microdrive (modified 1 times) Spankster
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I haven't had much luck with my 340 Microdrive....

It works fine in the PCMCIA adaptor on a Notbook and works fine in the SDDR-31 USB Reader... but sometimes doesn't work at all in the IA-1.

It always makes a clickety-click noise when in the IA-1 and on first access it takes about 5 seconds or so, but then finally reads. For example: a DIR command will take about 5 seconds... list the directory and then take a few more seconds to get the number of bytes free.

I have tried various formats: FAT-16, VFAT-16 LBA... tried a few IA1 BIOS settings, and I can't seem to get a good combination. I have tried scandisk on the IA-1 but it says everything is fine. It just doesn't sound fine or work as well and quickly as it does in the other devices... and sometimes doesn't get recognised at all in the IA1.

Any thoughts or hints would be greatly appreciated.

By the way: The IA1 is working perfectly with my 64 and 128 Flash memory -- just a Microdrive problem.

01-28-2002 01:36:15

New MessageRE:Trouble with Microdrive (modified 0 times) hwhack
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Sounds like it's power craved.
01-28-2002 07:40:49

New MessageRE:Trouble with Microdrive (modified 0 times) lostet
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Is yours the iomega microdrive? I just got one today and tried it and it makes the same noise as you described. It wouldn't boot either even though partition was set to bootable. Anyone out there have any suggestions? I seem to have spent 100 + on this thing and can't even use it. I know my IA-1 is hackable because I've been in the bios and booted from a CF card as well. TIA for any help.
02-17-2002 17:31:31

New MessageRE:Trouble with Microdrive (modified 0 times) radarman
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I hope this isn't the case, as I just bought an Iomega microdrive. I assumed they were just relabeled IBM drives, but maybe they did something unique to the drives.

Fortunately, power starved is a fixable problem. Get some fine wire, such as wire wrap wire, cut the original 3.3v trace, and run a new trace with wire to a nearby 5v node. This is done all the time, and I have some *brand new* SCSI hard disks that have these wires on them (they are commonly used to correct problems after the PCB has been released) Keep in mind that some CF memories might not enjoy 5v, but if you are only planning on using a microdrive, this is a perfect way to solve this type of problem.

If course, with our luck, the trace you will need will be an interior trace. Can anyone track this down and see if the 3.3V supply to the CF slot is on the surface of the PCB?

02-17-2002 21:10:44

New MessageRE:Trouble with Microdrive (modified 0 times) GRISHNAKH
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lostet I had problems with mine also but I got it working eventually. What OS are you using and what kind of CF reader do you have?
I dolly'd the image to my microdrive with a win98 bootdisk and ide-cf adapter then rebooted and the drive partitions were all screwed up. fdisk wouldn't recognize it and ranish was full of gibberish.
Next I boot to win2000 and use the USB reader and it sees the microdrive just fine and all of the files on it. whatever. I copy the files to a temp directory, format and sys the microdrive with the boot disk and ide converter (made sure it booted with the ia-1), then booted to win2k and copied the files from the temp directory and I had windows 98 booting from the microdrive.
What a pain
02-19-2002 21:09:50

New MessageRE:Trouble with Microdrive (modified 0 times) lostet
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I agree whole-heartedly. I sold the microdrive and went with the new midori image--works great. I had been using a cf-ide adapter as well. Ranish and fdisk didn't show any weird problems though. The guy who bought the microdrive is using it in his Casio pocket PC without any problems. Go figure.
02-21-2002 03:44:04

New MessageRE:Trouble with Microdrive (modified 0 times) radarman
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Ok, I just got my CF-IDE adapter from Mesa, and am running a 98lite install at the moment. The Iomega microdrive appears to take longer than the IA-1 is willing to wait to spin up and get ready. That means that when I first power up, it "loses" the drive, reboots, "finds" the drive, reboots again - and then it's up and running. Annoying, but if you don't plan to pull the plug on the power, acceptable.

There does appear to be a bit of a delay when you type dir, but so far the install is going fine. More importantly, the Iomega microdrive comes with a FAT16 partition - and it is set bootable. (I checked in fdisk - it was already set). All I had to do was format c: /q /s from a Win98 boot CD and copy the files.

03-02-2002 10:06:03

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