Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!apple!oliveb!sun!token!alpope
From: alpope@token.Sun.COM (Alan Pope)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.zenith.z100
Subject: Re: Z100 problems
Summary: Maybe Help
Keywords: hung system
Message-ID: <112875@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 28 Jun 89 17:21:24 GMT
References: <949@unocss.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Lines: 25

Most of your problems sound disk related.  This is a guess
but thought I might pass it on.  I had a real flakey system
about two years ago (it was actually an IBM AT at work).
I started to think that the metal oxides on the hard disk
were flaking off.  Things would disappear from disk, sometimes
returning. Programs would hang suddenly (I decided they were
badly loaded copies).  Chkdsk would find ever increasing
quantities of bad sectors, the system tracks would come and
go so that sometimes it would boot other times it was a
non-dos disk and other times I could only find the root directory.

Sound familiar?  I thought some of it sounded the same which is
why I'm venturing a guess.  It turned out that when I slid the AT's
cover back on, the top part of the cabinet bumped the data separator
cable causing imperfect connection on a couple of pins.  After
pulling the cable off and putting it back on firmly, the weirdness
went away.  What I'm guessing is that you probably have checked
the cable placement but you might want to mosy down to Radio
Shack and pick up a new ribbon cable to try instead of your
current cable.  The current ribbon may have a break that only
has partial contact.

Oh well, it's only a guess.
						Alan L. Pope
						alpope@sun.com