paula@bcsaic.UUCP (Paul Allen) (12/12/86)
One of my coworkers has an old IBM PC (not an XT) that he is trying to add a hard card to. At first the drive appeared to work OK, but then he started seeing parity check errors. Diagnostics showed random flakey memory errors. He replaced the power supply with a 150W unit. The power on self test now reports error number 131. Diagnostics report the same error. The error persists even with the hard card out of the system. The system has 256K on the mother board. The hard card has a 20Mb drive, but I don't have the brand handy. It looks to me like the next step is to verify that the system works without the hard card and with the original power supply, and then try it with a different 150W supply and the hard card in. My question for the net is: Is there anything other than power that one needs to watch out for when adding a hard card to a PC? Has anyone out there had similar problems? If you have any suggestions, please e-mail directly to me. I will summarize if anything significant turns up. Thanks Paul -- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Paul L. Allen | "Look out, men! He's armed!" Boeing Advanced Technology Center | "I've got a cheese grater, POB 24346 M/S 7L-44, | and I'm not afraid to use it!" Seattle, WA, USA 98124 | "Don't make it any harder (206) 865-3207 | on yourself, kid! Drop it!" ...!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!paula | "Eat mozzarella, copper!"
akk2@ur-tut.UUCP (A Kacker) (12/15/86)
In article <24@bcsaic.UUCP> paula@bcsaic.UUCP (Paul Allen) writes: >One of my coworkers has an old IBM PC (not an XT) that he is trying to >add a hard card to. At first the drive appeared to work OK, but then he >started seeing parity check errors. Diagnostics showed random flakey >memory errors. He replaced the power supply with a 150W unit. The >power on self test now reports error number 131. Diagnostics report the I have some questions along the same lines. We have two IBM PC's in our office for the secreteries to use. One of them is a PC and the other an XT. We bought an Omega Hard Card 20 for each machine and started having strange problems. On the XT which had a Paradise card and an Amdek monitor, the screen would sometimes just go blank and the computer would lock up and the only alternative would be to power up again. We used another Graphics card and another monitor and still had the same problem. The problem it seems was that the hard card was in the slot next to the Graphics card and the interaction between them was causing the blackouts. Well, when we had that problem fixed, we started getting occasional Drive C: not recognized errors. If we turned the machine off and then on again Drive C: would be just fine. We had this problem on both Hard Cards. The dealer told us that Omega had come out with a newer model and replaced our drives with the new ones. This was last Friday and we had the Drive C: error again once. My question is this. Does anyone have any experience with the Omega Hard Cards and would know why we are experiencing this intermittent problems ? -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ atheism all the way!! Atul Kacker UUCP : {allegra|seismo|decvax}!rochester!ur-tut!akk2
nather@ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather) (12/15/86)
In article <899@ur-tut.UUCP>, akk2@ur-tut.UUCP (A Kacker) writes: > > My question is this. Does anyone have any experience with the Omega Hard > Cards and would know why we are experiencing this intermittent problems ? > We bought (the original) Hardcard from Plus Development (10MB -- they now have both 10MB and 20MB versions) about a year ago. We installed it in an IBM Portable PC and have used it without any errors of any kind since that time, carting it on airplanes etc. many times. It was not the cheapest one available, but had a good press. It still has, in my opinion. They spent several years developing it, designing it so it occupied only one slot (not 1-1/2, which would not work in a Portable) and used so little power it could be added to the original PC without problems. Maybe you could sell yours and buy one that works better ... -- Ed Nather Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin {allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather nather@astro.AS.UTEXAS.EDU