wkb@cbnews.ATT.COM (Wm. Keith Brummett) (06/03/89)
I'm having a problem with the hard drive on my AT&T PC6300. The
symptoms are that after the machine has been on for a while (initially
about an hour, but lately down to half an hour) I get error messages
claiming read, write, and/or general failures on drive C, D, and/or
E (depending on where I am on the drive and what I'm doing). Once I
get any such message, the hard drive is completely unusable. If I
try to reboot, the hard disk fails diagnostics ("not ready") and the
machine tries to reboot from floppy. If I shut the system down and go
away for a few hours or overnight, the machine again works fine ...
for a while.
I have a large disk drive partitioned into three logical drives and the
DTC controller that originally came in my PC. These have nothing to do
with the problem, however, because I replaced them with a WD controller
and a Seagate ST225 and I got the same symptoms.
On the face of it, the problem sounds like a chip that is overheating
and shutting down. Does anybody have an idea as to what chip(s) it
might be? Am I doomed to hitting each of the dozens (and dozens) of
chips on the motherboard with a spray coolant in hopes of getting the
drive to work again momentarily? I've been told to try re-seating all
of the socketed chips on the motherboard. Does this sound like it
might work (has anybody else ever fixed a strange problem this way)?
If it helps, I've got an older PC6300 with 256K on the motherboard, 384K
on an AT&T memory card, 1Meg expanded memory on a PMI Fastcard IV, the
original AT&T mono video system, a 360K floppy, a 720K floppy, and an
8087 co-processor chip.
I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on how to proceed with this.
I really don't want to have a service tech say "needs a new mother-
board -- $600", or something like that. Thanks in advance for any
advice you might have for me.
--
| W. Keith Brummett (614) 860-3187 AT&T, Room 2B-252 |
| att!cbnews!wkb Cornet 353 6200 East Broad St. |
| or, wkb@cbnews.ATT.COM Columbus, OH 43213-1550 |
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