Paul,

Just currious if you tried using the cable select jumper setting. I have
seen some system not accept the master/slave relationship, but when set to
cable select - all worked fine.

HTH...John

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 11:31 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Hard drive failure--no 80 conductor cable


> Hello PCbuilders:
>
> I was a subscriber years ago while teaching a PC hardware course at a tech
> school, so I know this is the place for the straight scoop on my problem.
>
> I have an old (couple years, maybe) Seagate 40 GB hard drive that was
> running Windows 98 on my old PC.  Got a new Compaq a couple of months ago
> and once it was set up, I installed the old Seagate as the secondary slave
> to copy all our data over to the new drive that came with the Compaq.
>
> I had copied what I knew we needed, and told my wife to get what she
> needed.  "No big hurry," I said.  In the past, I used to have two drives
> installed at all times on our system.  When Windows got ornery I would
wipe
> out the secondary drive, format it, and move cables/jumpers as necessary
to
> make it the primary master then re-install Windows and applications.  What
> was the primary (boot) became the secondary drive and we copied data over
> at our leisure.  I'd repeat the process in a year or so.  Worked great for
> years!
>
> Well, to our surprise, our new system wouldn't boot.  Just hung on boot
> with a blank screen.  I tried everything I knew to track down the culprit
> and eventually saw the error "Secondary Slave, No 80 conductor cable" (or
> something like that).  I knew that wasn't really the problem, but gave it
> an 80-conductor cable just to see if it would be happy.  Tried it out on
> the old PC (now in my son's room).  No luck (also hung on boot, -Win98
> BTW).  Oh well, guess we don't have the old drive any more.  "You got all
> the stuff you needed, right?" I ask (assume, bad me!).  Wrong.
>
> So, I'm pretty sure the problem is in the on-board controller.  Do you
guys
> think I can get a VERY similar drive off eBay and swap controllers?  How
> similar do they have to be?  Model # needs to be identical, I am sure.
But
> what about firmware?
>
> Specifics of the drive:
> Seagate U6 Model ST340810A
> P/N: 9T7002-304
> HDA P/N: 100188744
> Config code: U2P-02
> Config level: DSMF1
> Firmware: 3.39
>
> If we need to we will spend the $$ to recover the data because of some
> priceless pictures, but am willing to try something different first.
>
> Thanks for your help!
>
>
> Paul Jones
> [log in to unmask]
>
>               The NOSPIN Group is now offering Free PC Tech
>                      support at our newest website:
>                           http://freepctech.com

              The NOSPIN Group is now offering Free PC Tech
                     support at our newest website:
                          http://freepctech.com