At 05:53 1/16/2000 , Conor McNessa wrote:
>Incidentally, what do you call the slot on the motherboard where the SCSI
>card goes, please?

SCSI cards come in both ISA and PCI versions, even PCMCIA versions
for portables. The ISA versions are becoming dated, are not always
plug and play, and are almost always the poorer performers although
they may be adequate for slow devices like scanners or Zip disks.

The SCSI controller that Brad was using is the Adaptec 2940UW
which is a PCI card. It's been one of the best SCSI cards for
5 years now.


>* how can you actually measure the internal temperature of your
>   computer?


If you have a modern motherboard that supports hardware temperature
monitoring, you can read the temperature from within BIOS setup.
You would need a software utility to read the temperature from
within Windows. This might be present on the utilities CD-ROM that
often comes with motherboards or might be available for download
from the motherboard maker's website. There are also generic
freeware or shareware temperature monitoring programs available
on the web for motherboards that come with temperature sensors:
<ftp://ftp.euro.net/d3/misc/mbmonitor/>
<ftp://ftp.euro.net/d6/misc/mbmonitor/>
<http://hmonitor.hypermart.net/>

You could purchase a remote temperature probe from somewhere
like Radio Shack. There are also probes designed especially for
computers. Once such fits in a disk drive bay and has an LED
readout where the disk drive face plate would be. Here's a link
with instructions on building a thermistor based temperature
monitor: <http://www.3dhardware.net/features/thermistor/>.


>* how do I low-level format a drive? I have the same SCSI drive...

There may be a low level format utility built into the BIOS
of your SCSI controller. Or else your SCSI controller's
manufacturer might have a program for this available for
download. Low level formatting is a serious step and once
started must not be stopped. (It can take several hours to
finish.) A power outage during this time could cause problems.

Regards,
Bill

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