Forgive me if this is a common question, I've googled a bit and all I could find is threads about clicking noise from drives.
I have a ROM 1 GS, with new power supply and CFFA3000 card. The computer is perfectly quiet when using drive emulation with CFFA. However, when I connect my recently acquired Apple 3.5" drive and boot GS/OS, there is a ticking noise about twice a second through the speaker. The sound dissapears when selecting a menu, or holding the mouse button in general. Any ideas?
I can't answer your question definitively but the start of basic electronics trouble shooting would imply there is interference coming from the drive, however elimination is still needed.
1. Does it occur with any other software being booted from the drive?
2. Do you have access to any other drive to try on your GS or any other GS to try your drive on?
3. May sound strange but try moving the drive as far as the cable will allow from your GS and see if there is a change in pitch or volume of the noise.
Unless someone here recognises the specific problem start with the above.
Have you checked the control panel settings for noises that can be optionally set for various disk access actions?
The noise is completely absent when performing same actions using emulated disk via CFFA3000 or a real 5.25" drive, OR when not using GS/OS. Nothing changes with moving the drive physically further away from the computer. Unfortunately I do not have another GS at the moment to check. Looking for a ROM 3 right now...
Unless somebody can point me to more troubleshooting, I think I'm just going to disconnect it and keep using the CFFA. Not the end of the world, but would like to understand the issue...
To confirm, it is a "dumb" 3.5" drive and not a "smart" Unidisk 3.5, correct? I recall when I tested my Unidisk on my gs, the drive activity light would frequently flash at steady intervals for no apparent reason when I booted the gsos setup disk.
I don't recall if it did it with the disk in or out, though. At the time I was just using the gs to confirm the function of the drive and eject mechanism. So I was constantly inserting and ejecting. But I definitely recall the access light flickering in scenarios where the "dumb" drive did not.
I haven't spent a lot of time in gsos with my "dumb" 3.5. But definitely do not recall any kind of noise though.
Yes, it's Apple 3.5" Drive, model A9M0106, and it doesn't matter if disk is in or out. Also, the LED stays off.
Surprised with all the expertise on these forums no one has ever come up with a solution for the clicking after all these years? I have two rom 01 IIgs machines and they both do the clicking within the finder. I have normally just lived with the sound when using the 5.25 disks. If the ROM 03 does not do this is there a way to fix the ROM 01 IIgs with the same circuit? Are there documents around on the difference in the motherboards?
Never really cared to fix the problem but sounds like a fun project to see if a sound fix can be found (other than not using 5.25 disk drives).
Any ideas? Is it a low voltage condition and just a capacitor needed somewhere or a high voltage spike?
Only curious.
Which 3.5" drive do you have?
While I've never had any clicking sound like you describe, I've heard it's a common problem.
There's also been speculation this was the rreason a cap (C50?) although I think that cap was to provide more power for the Ensonic. The mod was around all the SC (sound caps) and maybe did address these various glitches that would tick the speaker. AFAIK there is no way to rememdy this.