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From: jerry@polygen.uucp (Jerry Shekhel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Perstor HDC vs. 386/33
Message-ID: <1093@stewart.UUCP>
Date: 14 May 91 15:09:05 GMT
Reply-To: jerry@stewart.UUCP (Jerry Shekhel)
Organization: Polygen Corporation, Waltham, MA
Lines: 28

Hello.  I'm having a hardware problem I can't quite pin down.  I've been
using a Perstor hard drive controller to format my Maxtor 2190 to 277MB
(the normal MFM capacity is 152MB).  It worked fine in my 16MHz 386SX for
several months.  I have just replaced the SX motherboard with a 33MHz DX,
and I'm having the following problem.

After the machine has been on for about 15-20 minutes, I begin to have
problems with rebooting.  Ctrl-Alt-Del causes the machine to lose video
output, and after it spins the drives, the motherboard emits two beeps and
halts.  If I then press the hardware reset switch, it doesn't get anywhere;
there is one long high-pitched beep followed by eight lower, shorter beeps.

Now, the weird part:  No matter how long the machine has been on, I can
always reboot fine if I temporarily switch down to non-turbo mode (25MHz).
Even weirder: the whole problem goes away if I replace the Perstor with an
old MFM controller (WD1003-WA2).  On the other hand, if I put the Perstor
into a different machine (8MHz 286), there are no problems there, either.
So I can't pin down whether the problem is with the motherboard or the
controller.  Can anyone help?
--
+-------------------+----------------------+---------------------------------+
| JERRY J. SHEKHEL  | POLYGEN CORPORATION  | When I was young, I had to walk |
| Drummers do it... | Waltham, MA USA      | to school and back every day -- |
|    ... In rhythm! | (617) 890-2175       | 20 miles, uphill both ways.     |
+-------------------+----------------------+---------------------------------+
|           ...! [ princeton mit-eddie bu sunne ] !polygen!jerry             |
|                            jerry@polygen.com                               |
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