Belated thanks to everyone who offered advice with the above 2
problems I was afflicted with nearly a month back.

Confession time!:  It turned out I had reversed the parrallel lead to
the scanner, plugging it into the serial port, and the output bridge on
the scanner.   Duh!!  I blame the bad back.

The CD-ROM failures are perhaps more interesting in that the dead
Sony 32X I hadn't got a spark out of for 8 months, I gave one last
symbolic dismantle and reassembly, stripping it down a bit further
this time, and cleaning the lens.  Popped it back in and hey-presto,
a working drive again!  I suspect dust, or perhaps those
unimpressive looking ribbon sockets.  Dust seems likely to be at
the heart of the 4X's partial failure also.

Lastly, the floppy drive packed up.  Dismantled and dusted it with
the vacuum cleaner, and its fine again.

The cheap case we bought has poor ventilation, and until I left a
drive bay permanently open, sucked air in through all the drive
doors building up quite a dust.  I think this has been our central
problem.

Anyway, no new motherboard/CD-ROM drive needed after all, just
a bit of dusting!  Worth trying before slinging apparently
dead/malfunctioning components!   :-)

Best wishes,    Neil Taylor

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