peter@cuba.cayman.com (Peter Schmidt) (12/08/89)
Hi y'all- I just completed an exhausting 4 days (nights, actually) doing my ICUS 2nd hard disk/P5.1 upgrade, and in the process managed to cause myself major amounts of grief. (Please note that this is no way a reflection on Gil and Lenny - it was me that was broken, not their instructions, which I think are outstanding.) Herein are a few of the worst gotchas I experienced and their solutions. If you're a real hardware type or have no plans to do the ICUS upgrade, you should probably punt now... The symptoms and causes listed below are the ones I encountered myself. The Cause lines refer to what caused the problem for me. Bear in mind that the same symptom may well have several different causes. Symptom: When I try to boot my UPC, the floppy light comes on immediately and I can hear the hard disk re-cal-ing over and over. Cause: Your disk controller chip may be loose. Solution: Push it back down into its socket (back near the floppy-disk cable) - firmly this time (not like when you installed the silly WD2010...). Symptom: My upgrade seems to almost work. I can talk to both drives, but I can't boot off them due to read errors. Cause: Your cable from the motherboard socket to the extension board is too long. (Kudos to Gil for figuring this out at long distance.) Solution: Shorten the cable - it should probably not be longer than about 6". Symptom: My upgrade works until I try to close the case. Then the motherboard goes back to being recognized as P3...P5. Cause: The little metal flange that descends about a 1/4" below the back of the floppy drive is crushing the connector plugged into the motherboard socket. Solution: Construct a lower profile connector, or remove the part of the flange that is crushing the connector (the leftmost 1.5" looking from the front of the machine). N.B. be very wary of sawing or drilling out the flange, as both methods will produce a lot of fine metal dust. I actually used a big pair of pliers and removed it bit-by-bit via metal-fatigue. (Ugly, but it worked.) Symptom: At boot, the hard and floppy disk access lights come on solid, but all I get is the little "dancing squares" at the top of my monitor. Cause: One or both of the Vcc or GND connections to the motherboard from the extender board has come loose. Solution: Remove cable, use continuity tester to find break, and fix it. Symptom: I can boot with the upgrade installed, but my boot disk does a lot of re-cal-ing. Cause: GND and/or Vcc on the motherboard socket are poorly connected (making loose contact) or are tied to an "empty pin" on the socket (e.g. due to bad soldering). Solution: Reconnect, or clip extraneous pins (those not in the instructions, if any) so that they no longer are inserted into the motherboard socket. Symptom: I just fixed my broken GND and Vcc connections, and now my diagnostic floppy won't boot. Cause: Something about that constant-access-light-on state has trashed the loader on your floppy. Solution: Use backup diagnostics floppy (note no smiley). Those were the baddies - hope this is helpful. Regards, Peter