Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ucbvax!pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!svv
From: svv@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Nobody in Particular)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Disk Drive Mayhem
Keywords: HELP!
Message-ID: <288@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: 21 Jan 88 22:16:04 GMT
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu
Reply-To: svv@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Nobody in Particular)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 38

I just got a hand-me-down PC from my folks last month. It's a true-blue
IBM PC, with 2 half height drives and a 10 meg Maynard Hard Disk.

From my inpection of the insides the the PC, it seems that the hard
disk controller is soldered on piggy-back style to the disk controller.
Also, the BIOS chip had been replaced by a new hard disk BIOS chip.

The problem:

When I set it up and booted the machine, the hard disk worked fine. I
breathed a sigh of relief because the PC had endured a 450 mile road
trip from So. Cal. However, neither of the drives worked. When I tried
to "dir" a disk, that worked fine. But copying, reading or writing
files gave me a "disk drive not ready" error. I figured that the 
drive heads got out of alignment in the commute so I went and bought
another 1/2 ht. 360k drive. When I plugged THIS one in, as soon
as I booted the computer up, both drives turned on and started running
(not reading anything, just running), but DOS booted up on the
hard disk as usual. But the new drive gave me similar errors.

I thus concluded that the controller must be screwed up, so my question is:

1) Maynard makes my hard disk BIOS chip, my hard disk, AND my controller.
Can I replace the controller with a non-Maynard board and still keep
every device happy?

2) Is my controller really screwed up? Is it something else? 


I'd greatly appreciate any leads. I'm afraid to take my PC into the shop
because the diagnosis will probably cost 10 time as much as the solution.


Thanks,

S. Vasudevan
svv@cory.berkeley.edu
(415) 845 - 9354