[comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware] PLUS Hardcard20 needs repair. Where and how

ong@d.cs.okstate.edu (ONG ENG TENG) (01/17/91)

Does anyone have a PLUS hardcard that fails?  The one we put one
our Compaq portable just did.  I thought it might be the
banging that a portable takes, but apperantly the controller
on the card went bad.  A couple of the custom chips are dead cold
when in operation as opposed to the rest being warm.  We would
have thrown the thing away except that we are still interested
in some files we have on the card.  Has anybody gone thru the
process (of repairing a hardcard) before?  How much do they
want?

Thanks in advance.

E. Teng Ong (ong@d.cs.okstate.edu)   

honeywel@wayback.unm.edu (Honeywell Field Service) (01/18/91)

In article <1991Jan16.201413.15873@d.cs.okstate.edu> ong@d.cs.okstate.edu (ONG ENG TENG) writes:
>Does anyone have a PLUS hardcard that fails?  The one we put one
>our Compaq portable just did.  I thought it might be the
>banging that a portable takes, but apperantly the controller

We've lost about 10 of the PLUS 40MB hardcards and I've been unable to find
any 4th party depot repair outfits that could fix them.  PLUS wants so much
to repair their hardcards that it is usually cheaper to purchase a new
hard drive and controller.  It is our present policy to throw PLUS hardcards
in the trash whenever encountered.



--
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   HONEYWELL Third Party Services  --  Albuquerque, New Mexico 
        Mike Thomas (800) 525-7439      (505) 888-5820 
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achilles@unixland.uucp (David Holland) (01/18/91)

ong@d.cs.okstate.edu (ONG ENG TENG) writes:

> Does anyone have a PLUS hardcard that fails?  The one we put one
> our Compaq portable just did.  I thought it might be the
> banging that a portable takes, but apperantly the controller
> on the card went bad.  A couple of the custom chips are dead cold
> when in operation as opposed to the rest being warm.  We would
> have thrown the thing away except that we are still interested
> in some files we have on the card.  Has anybody gone thru the
> process (of repairing a hardcard) before?  How much do they
> want?

That happened to us about a year ago. One night I discovered a bunch of read 
errors; they got markedly worse when I ran some disk-test utilities. It 
turned out to be thermal in nature: the more you ran the disk, the worse it 
got. We managed to copy off everything we needed since the last backup, and 
we replaced the card with a new one. (We decided that repair was not 
economical.) 
 
------------
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