erick@csuf3b.UUCP (Eric Keisler) (05/13/89)
[--------------------------------------------------------------------------] Seeing as Seagate SCSI drive problems have been discussed frequently in this newsgroup, I thought I'd share my experience. My ST138N SCSI drive (1yr. old) started to exhibit the infamous non-spinup syndrome: the drive simply wouldn't spinup when I switched on my B2000 (oh yes, the drive is installed in a Rev 4.2 B2000 with a GVP controller). At first the problem would happen maybe once in every 10 powerups. Then it became more frequent. I usually could recover by just waiting a couple of minutes and then powering up again. Well one day the drive seemed to have died. No amount of powerup retrys could bring it to life. I put the drive in a box and into the closet and ordered a Conner CP340. The Conner arrived... DOA. While waiting for my next CP340, I decided to give my 138N another try. After much mucking about (I'm *NOT* a hardware type), I came up with a hunch that the problem was somehow related to power (brilliant, no?). Actually I surmized that something about the way the B2000's PS comes up in a loaded system caused me to think that the drive needed just a teeny bit more juice for its spinup logic. Anyway enough speculation, like I said: I'm not a hardware type. Jump Starting a Dead Seagate SCSI: I had an old (spare) PS from an old Rev 3.9 B2000. So I simply put the bare drive and PS on the table, plugged the PS into the wall and the PS's drive power connector into the drive. I turned on the PS and... The drive began to spinup eminating unusual sputtering sounds and then slowly picked-up pitch until it reached the charcterisic normal whine. The sputtering sound scared me, but I figured what the heck, it was destined for the scrap heap anyway. So just for grins I tried two more jumpstarts before installing the drive. Same sputterings, with eventual spinup. I installed the drive, powered up (the drive came up like a champ!), ran a zillion diskperfs, and verified that all the data on the drive survived. The drive has worked flawlessly for over a week now. Like I said, I'm no harware guru - I have no real explanation as to why the "jumpstarting" worked. But it did. Hmmm... what am I going to do with another 40meg when the new CP340 arrives?? I guess I'll just *have* to find a use for it ;-). --- Eric Keisler, Computer Services, CSU Fresno erick@csufres.CSUFresno.EDU