hdrw@ibmpcug.co.uk (Howard Winter) (06/19/91)
(On the subject of the latest AMI BIOS for a 386 with Cache being dated 1989). Someone is either dishonest or misinformed. I have an Octek 386-33 motherboard with 64K cache, and the AMI BIOS date is 01/03/91. I don't know whether each manufacturer has to have their own version of the BIOS (my board has the SIS chipset) or if the same one will work on all boards. It doesn't seem likely that for current technology boards (OK, 486 is here but 386s are still selling like hot cakes) that the latest software would be 2+ years old. Perhaps the manufacturer of your board doesn't have a later BIOS, but AMI themselves may be able to supply something ? Whatever, I would go back to the supplier and get them to sort it out properly. Good luck, Howard. -- Automatic Disclaimer: The views expressed above are those of the author alone and may not represent the views of the IBM PC User Group. -- hdrw@ibmpcug.Co.UK Howard Winter 0W21' 51N43'
hdrw@ibmpcug.co.uk (Howard Winter) (07/01/91)
I don't know if this is a complete red herring, but I was sitting
near a machine we'd had installed for a client (a Compaq 386/N as I
remember) and the hard disk powered itself down. Now I'm used to
this happening on laptops, but in a desktop machine it surprised me.
When I did something which needed the disk, it ran up again and
acted as if nothing had happened apart from the time taken to
spin up to speed - just like a laptop. The drive fitted is a
Conner 40MB 3 1/2" low profile (about 1" thick) - just like you
might find in a laptop.
Various thoughts occur to me:
1. Could it be that the drive itself has a power-down timeout period ?
2. What if a laptop-destined drive with the above feature was
fitted to a desktop machine by mistake ?
3. What if there is a jumper on the drive which activates this
feature, and was accidentally activated on a desktop machine ?
4. Could there be a signal-line or a command which tells the drive
to power down, and it was set/sent in error ?
How do laptops stop the disk anyway - surely not just by chopping
the power ?
Conner drives run very quietly normally - would someone in a noisy
environment notice if the drive stopped, apart from the 20-second
delay while it spins up ?
Just my tuppenceworth -
Howard.
--
Automatic Disclaimer:
The views expressed above are those of the author alone and may not
represent the views of the IBM PC User Group.
--
hdrw@ibmpcug.Co.UK Howard Winter 0W21' 51N43'