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From: frodo@sigyn.idt.unit.no (Frode Bergh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware,sci.electronics
Subject: Dying WREN II harddisks
Message-ID: <1990Sep13.145431.7509@idt.unit.no>
Date: 13 Sep 90 14:54:31 GMT
Sender: frodo@idt.unit.no (Frode Bergh)
Organization: Div. of CS & T, Norwegian Institute of Technology
Lines: 39

In our department at The Norwegian Institute of Technology we bought
15 CDC WREN II 94155-85 80MB harddisks last year.  So far 5 out of 15
have died.  All of them with the same symptom.  We got a 1 year
warranty, and 3 of them were replaced free of charge.  The last two
will not be replaced by the company we bought them from.  We expect 
further problems in the future....

Symptom:

At power on, the disk spins up as normal.  The LED on the disk lights 
up.  After 20 seconds there is a "CLUNK"-noise, the disk gives up and
spins down.  The LED starts blinking.

There are two controller boards on the bottom of the hard disk unit.
By exchanging parts from a new disk, we _know_ that it is the 
_bottom_ card that fails.

1. Is this a known problem ?

2. Does anybody know which component(s) that fail(s) ?

3. Is there a company on this planet that can deliver spare boards,
   or repair them ?

We would appreciate any help
 

Frode Bergh       frodo@idt.unit.no  OR  frodo@loke.idt.unit.no

The University of Trondheim
The Norwegian Institute of Technology
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science