Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!news.funet.fi!tukki.jyu.fi!euler!tt From: tt@euler.jyu.fi (Tapani Tarvainen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware Subject: Re: IDE hard drive pauses... sometimes. Message-ID: Date: 17 Jun 91 12:17:09 GMT References: <1991Jun13.193634.24680@sarah.albany.edu> <1991Jun14.124305.8021@uwasa.fi> Sender: news@jyu.fi (News articles) Organization: University of Jyvaskyla Lines: 29 In-Reply-To: hv@uwasa.fi's message of Fri, 14 Jun 91 12: 43:05 GMT Originator: tt@euler.jyu.fi Nntp-Posting-Host: euler.jyu.fi In article <1991Jun14.124305.8021@uwasa.fi> hv@uwasa.fi (Harri Valkama) writes: >In article tt@euler.jyu.fi (Tapani Tarvainen) writes: >>In article <1991Jun13.193634.24680@sarah.albany.edu> brk102@leah.albany.edu (Brian King) writes: >> >>>I have an IDE hard drive, a Toshiba 100MB (can't remember the model >>>number), that seems to pause sometimes, for around 15 seconds, and >>>then continues. >>It seems that certain versions of >>AMI 386 bios have a bug that causes them to hang occasionally like >>that with big disks (I don't know the exact limit: it doesn't appear >>with 40MB drives, and does with 100MB ones). We've had this problem >>with several machines; after we complained enough they got as new >>bios eproms and the problem went away. >Perhaps you could give us some dates and version numbers out of these >AMI bioses you are writing about. I have AMI bios and 135 Mb AT/IDE >and I haven't noticed such problems. The problematic bios date was 4/30/89. Actually it appears it may not be the size of the disk (or at least not only that); the speed of the disk may be more important: it does look like it could be a timing problem. Anyway, our experience was that machines with the AMI bios had the problem, when it was changed (in one case to Phoenix, in another to newer AMI) it went away. -- Tapani Tarvainen (tarvaine@jyu.fi, tarvainen@finjyu.bitnet)