kabra437@pallas.athenanet.com (Ken Abrams) (02/27/91)
I have now had 2 of our new PS/2 model 70 machines with 60M IDE drives crash and trash the hard disk. Both times it happened, Windows 3.0 was running and nothing fancy was going on. The first one went back to the dealer since this situation causes the drive to fail the IBM diagnostics on the set-up disk. Both times, something in the Windows directory (or fat) gets trashed so bad that a format can't recover at least one sector. The second time, I reformatted and reloaded (a couple of bad sectors showed up in the format) and it is running OK but still fails the customer diag. test on the drive. 1) I am beginning to worry that there is a software bug hiding somewhere that will eventually "eat" all my new machines. Has anyone else had a similar experience? 2) Of the 9 new machines, all the IDE drives were perfect when new (no bad sectors). Do these machines use an error correcting controller such that they should never show any physically bad sectors? I visit both groups on a regular basis but if you have any hard facts to pass along, mail might be better. If anything sound turns up, I will post a summary. -- ======================================================== Ken Abrams uunet!pallas!kabra437 Illinois Bell kabra437@athenanet.com Springfield (voice) 217-753-7965
pcb@cacs.usl.edu (Peter C. Bahrs) (02/28/91)
In article <1000@pallas.athenanet.com> kabra437@pallas.athenanet.com (Ken Abrams) writes: > >I have now had 2 of our new PS/2 model 70 machines with 60M IDE drives >crash and trash the hard disk. Both times it happened, Windows 3.0 >was running and nothing fancy was going on. The first one went back >to the dealer since this situation causes the drive to fail the >... I have ps/2 70s and 80s that periodically flake out with win3 but no serious disk crashes yet. I talked with someone at microsoft in the winword technical support group and he said quote: 'some of our biggest problems are on the PS/2 Model 70' unquote. hmmmm....is the rift between MS and IBM that bad? just a joke..go blue Anyway, my symptoms are random system crashes including UAE, C:\ and freeze. I am not going to pull boards and change settings any longer. I have done that several times. I also cannot reproduce the errors on demand. It appears to be either memory, bios, or MCA incompatiblities from win3. anyway...
dgil@pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett) (02/28/91)
There was a report some time back (2-3 months) that IBM had changed the
PS/2 70 motherboard design, and that Windows 3.0 does not work with the new
motherboard. Neither Microsoft nor IBM expected a quick fix; perhaps 3.1
will address the problem.
Davekabra437@pallas.athenanet.com (Ken Abrams) (03/01/91)
In article <796@saxony.pa.reuter.COM> dgil@pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett) writes: > > There was a report some time back (2-3 months) that IBM had changed the >PS/2 70 motherboard design, and that Windows 3.0 does not work with the new >motherboard. Neither Microsoft nor IBM expected a quick fix; perhaps 3.1 >will address the problem. > Dave Thanks to all who responded with posts and mail. So far, there has been no solid information but there have been several interesting posibilities. My dealer finally called back after I left the original post. They said that IBM admitted to a "bad batch" of 60M IDE drives used in PS/2s. They added that IBM would NOT indicate how widespread the problem was. For the moment I will believe the dealer since they are replacing the (apparently) damaged drives at no cost. It is possible that the damage always showed up in the Windows directory because it was being used the most. The other 7 machines have been "burning in" with Windows running for about a week now with no ill effects. I have my fingers crossed. I wonder if the 60M drives are re-conditioned from the original AT? (No flames, please. Just kidding!) I will post additional follow-ups if anything significant shows up. -- ======================================================== Ken Abrams uunet!pallas!kabra437 Illinois Bell kabra437@athenanet.com Springfield (voice) 217-753-7965