mikem@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Mike Morton) (05/23/89)
I've had intermittent problems with an 80Mb internal drive in an SE/30.
It sporadically won't boot. When it's refusing to boot, running HD SC Setup
off a floppy tells me there are no "suitable" SCSI devices attached.
I haven't been reading comp.sys.mac lately, so I may be duplicating some info
with this posting. While I have no new insight into the problem, I did find
out some things about repairing it.
1) Some stores insist on taking your old hard drive before they can order a
replacement. Don't put up with this; find another store. I went through
three before finding one which told me that the internal HD is an "advance
exchange item" (in Apple's parlance) and that once they're convinced it's
broken, I can take it back home intact to await the replacement.
Question: If you seem to have trouble only when booting, should you leave
your flaky drive on non-stop while waiting for a replacement? Or will this
cause the problem to get worse?
2) It may be easiest to demonstrate the problem using Apple HD SC Setup. The
machine consistently booted fine at the dealer, and of course their self-
running diagnostics found nothing. I ran Setup and tried a random succession
of Test, Update, and Drive. Update and Drive sometimes told me that "The
partition map's structure is invalid." I haven't been back to the store
yet, but they told me on the phone that if I can produce that message in
front of their eyes, that's enough proof to get a replacement drive under
warranty. In fact, they were surprised that I could boot AT ALL.
It's great that some net-folks are collecting summaries of what's going
on... when's Apple going to look into this?
-- Mike Morton // P.O. Box 11378, Honolulu, HI 96828, (808) 676-6966 HST
Internet: msm@uhics.ics.hawaii.edu (preferred over uhccux)
(anagrams): Mr. Machine Tool; Ethical Mormon; Chosen Immortal; etc.