mrwittma@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Martin R. Wittmann) (11/11/89)
Hmmm... I have a slight problem. A friend was using my PC at work and *something* happened so that the PC NO LONGER ACKNOWLEDGES the existence of my hard disk. When I reboot (no floppy in A:), I'm thrown directly into BASIC (This is a True Blue XT from '85). When I boot from a DOS 3.2 system floppy and try to change to C: or get a 'dir c:', DOS tells me this is an *invalid drive*. The only additional symptom: when I boot, I get a "1701" error. The hard disk (a good ol' Seagate ST225) has been making some extra whines and groans for a long time now, but I can still here it spinning and it isn't noticeably louder than before this strange phenomenon occured. Is this a hard disk crash, or did something flake out on the motherboard or ??? This machine also has a PCSG Turbo286 accelerator board in slot 8, if that makes any difference to the diagnosis. It produces a "1801" error every time I boot, which I ignore. Any clues as to what's wrong or suggestions on useful diagnostic procedures would be greatly appreciated. I'll be checking this group, but email would be better yet. Many thanks, Martin
ppa@hpldola.HP.COM (Paul P. Austgen) (11/15/89)
Check the CMOS ram for disk type for the hard disk. It could be wrong. You also may have a bad boot record, which is on the first sector of the first track.