Hi,

Thanks Kenny, for your reply. I had already tried that. I pulled the battery
and left it out for 30 minutes while I took care of other chores -- same
result. Then, grabbing at straws, I wondered if for some inexplicable reason
the switch was involved. I pulled off the "gang connector" used with this
motherboard and just jumpered the switch pins; this would leave the machine
on all the time (at least for the moment) but it would reveal the problem.
But no, same thing. I don't believe in coincidences, so I'm sure there is
some connection to hooking up the 2nd drive -- But since I've done this
triple dozens of times I'm at a loss to explain it. One last effort will be
to try to replace the processor, I've got another old Celeron at my shop. I
still think it's the motherboard, though I don't know why that should be the
case. I put a meter on the old 2nd drive -- nothing unusual. I had wondered
if the PCB on the drive itself was flaky and had sent a spurious surge to
the motherboard and toasted it. But again, there was no noise or unusual
activity of any kind, the machine simply shut off. And, as I mentioned in my
first post, I have already transfered the data to another drive, so that's
not it either. Very odd, but interesting.

                                                                        thanks,
                                                                        Glenn Miller

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml