heppell@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (07/09/87)
Another possible suggestion to those of you having problems
with your Seagate (or other half height) hard drives:
In the process of installing a second floppy in my XT clone, I
had to remove and re-mount my ST-225. Upon power-up, all I got
in reply was garbage (e.g., no boot from C:). No cables were
connected backwards, etc, but when I took the mounting bracket
out of the computer to check, the drive worked. My final solution
was to simply loosen the mounting screws, and viola! I have had
no problems since then (about 4 months). I don't anticipate any
more.
Someone mentioned previous experience with floppy drives that had
non-flat cases, which warped when over-tightened. I suspect a
similar problem. Most hard drives will take a lot of abuse
(my 225 has a spec. of 40 g's), but common sense rules.
Disclaimer: Seagate is not responsible for my stupidity, nor
I for theirs. The above opinion is worth its weight in gold.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin G. Heppell USNail: 784 Santa Barbara Rd.
USENET: ucbvax!cory!heppell Berkeley, CA 94707-2046
arpa: heppell@cory.Berkeley.EDU (415) 528-6396leonard@percival.pdx.com (Leonard Erickson) (07/11/87)
I've run a few informal experiments at work. Since we have around 10-15 PC's that have been upgraded to XT's by adding ST-225s and several XT's that have had the original drives replaced with them, I have all too _much_ experience. My (natural) mistake was to use the mounting screws from the previous drive. This puts pressure on the case of the drive. After a lot of intermittent problems, I now routinely trim the screws down until they are just long enough to use. I no longer see the problems. -- Leonard Erickson ...!tektronix!reed!percival!leonard CIS: [70465,203] ...!tektronix!reed!percival!!bucket!leonard "I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'. You know... I'd rather be a hacker."