tbopp@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Tom Bopp) (04/15/89)
We are trying to fix (and hopefully recover data from) an old (vintage
1986) 20 Mb Sider hard disk. Calls to the manufacturer are greeted with
the reply "We no longer support the old model Siders, but we'll give
you a tradein allowance on a new one."
I have a working 10 Mb Sider and had hoped perhaps to isolate the problem
by patching across between the two. Unfortunately this is only possible
as a check on the card that plugs in to the Apple and the internal power
supply, both of which are good. The remaing electronics are completely
different between the two drives. The trouble is not in the Apple, since
the behavior is the same on two Apple //e's.
Symptom: on power-up, the disk spin and the red light comes on, and it
stays like that forever (until I Reset).
There are diagnostics provided that can be run from a floppy:
The program "DIAGNOSTICS" (v.4.0) says "I/O ERROR! SENSE BYTES:00 00 00 00
ERROR READING PARM BLOCK"
The program "READ PARAMETER BLOCK" flicks the red light on/off, then
reports "HARD DISK #1 IS NOT RESPONDING".
Rurunning "DIAGNOSTICS" now says "...SENSE BYTES 8A 00 00 01 ...."
Attempting "CATALOG,S7" from DOS 3.3 gives "I/O ERROR"
Finally, when we give up and attempt to initialize (low-level format) the
Sider, even that won't work. We get "TESTING ROM
TESTING HOST ADAPTER
TESTING CONTROLLER
FORMATTING..."
and then the red light comes on forever, but nothing really happens.
So, does anybody have any ideas? Are we talking head crash, blown capacitor,
bad ROM, slow motor, or what? What should I do next?
Please reply by e-mail since this may not be of general interest. Also,
please withold analogies, like "When this happened to my floppy, all I had
to do was replace the chip on the Analog board..." That won't help.
Thanks in advance.
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