I bought a new drive and cable and tested that. The symptoms were the same.
I do not have another box available to test the one in the computer, but I
am relying on the fact that a brand new drive and cable did exactly the same
thing. I disconnected my D drive and used that power connector on the CD-RW
so that the power lead to the A drive was alone on that lead. The CD-RW was
working, so there is power to that lead. I just disconnected the D drive to
take some burden off the PS and to give the A drive its own lead.
I have a jumper on this board, but have not done that yet. Flashing the
BIOS is going to be problemmatical without an A drive since that has to be
done in DOS. In as much as I cannot access this drive in DOS, safe mode, or
Win 98, how would I be able to flash it. There is a newer version of the
BIOS which I have on a Zip disk, but so far as I know I will not have
support for the zip drive. I do not have the means at hand or the time
available to test the power lead, run the drive on another machine, etc. I
am only able to what I've done so far, and some of the things like clearing
the BIOS. I'll let you know how it works. Thanks, Joel
At 09:45 PM 6/6/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>Mark, I reloaded the defaults and got "drive failure (40)" message in POST,
>and it stopped there. I had to go back in the BIOS and disable "seek
floppy
>on boot" to get past POST. I then tried Larry Fisk's suggestion to boot
>into safe mode command prompt only. When I tried to run the A drive in DOS
>I got "seek error" message, and it would not run. The LED lit up, but it
>would not run. Any other suggestions? Joel
I just jumped into this thread at the end and I want to clarify..... You
absolutely know the floppy, cable and power connector are good and you
have tested the cable and floppy on another box right ? OK then it must be
something in the BIOS...probably a corrupt BIOS.. Did you use a motherboard
jumper to clear the BIOS before you loaded defaults ? If not and you have
such a jumper to short the BIOS...the one to clear the password is the same
thing...then put the jumper on and let it sit there 30 seconds.
If you don't have a jumper but the board has a Disk lithium battery then do
this....pull the battery out and short the lead for 15 seconds.....touch
the top springy part to the bottom of the battery holder..then put the
battery back in and start the machine....at the start of POST immediately
enter the BIOS and load defaults...save then exit ...reboot
successfully...reboot again ...enter the BIOS change your settings.
NOTE ..once you start shorting the BIOS with the battery leads you are
taking a risk....I wouldn't hesitate to try it but you might not be
comfortable with the associated risk.....i.e. you could fry the BIOS or
very remote chance you could damage the motherboard.
At this point if it were me and I absolutely knew that the floppy, power
connector, ribbon cable were good ...and I had tested everything on another
PC and put a meter on the power lead...and had re seated everything a
couple of times my next step would be to check the motherboard manufacture
for the latest BIOS version. If I wasn't running that version I would clear
the BIOS with the jumper or the battery leads as explained above ...load
defaults ...reboot ....and then flash to the latest version. Make sure you
use a UPS when you flash the BIOS....particularly if like me you are in
California! If the power goes off while you are flashing you will loose
your BIOS and will need a EPROM burner to burn another BIOS
Again there is a bit of risk that you might loose the BIOS but for me it
would be an acceptable level of risk.
Mark Rode
The NOSPIN Group
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