Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mavrick!luis
From: luis@mavrick.UUCP (luis basto)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: 386SX system rejects hard disk
Keywords: DTK, hard disk
Message-ID: <665@mavrick.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jun 91 06:30:08 GMT
Distribution: na
Lines: 19

Encountered a rather strange problem with a DTK 386SX-16 system recently.
It's been running fine for over a year and suddenly the hard disk won't
boot.  The drive is a Seagate ST251-1 and thus immediately suspect :-).

However, further testing reveals the following:

-- the Seagate and controller works fine on another system
-- the DTK will not recognize any drive, IDE, MFM, or ESDI
-- replaced power supply to make sure that's not the problem

Basically, the system boots up fine on the floppy drive and runs whatever
I can fit on a floppy but just adamantly refused to boot the hard drive.
I didn't think there was much on the motherboard that handles hard disks
except maybe for the interrupt controller.

Anyone heard or seen this phenomenon or has any ideas? If everything fails
this might be usable as a diskless workstation :-).

Luis