Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!uunet!mcsun!ukc!acorn!moncam!Elbereth
From: Elbereth@moncam.co.uk (Dave Emmerson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: slow starter
Summary: Check your setup
Keywords: booting, hard disk
Message-ID: <603@marvin.moncam.co.uk>
Date: 25 Feb 90 12:54:49 GMT
References: <906@tuewsd.lso.win.tue.nl> <1990Feb7.202324.22394@seri.gov> <912@tuewsd.lso.win.tue.nl>
Organization: Monotype ADG, Cambridge, UK
Lines: 24

In article <912@tuewsd.lso.win.tue.nl>, wsinpp@lso.win.tue.nl (Peter Peters) writes:
> > marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl) writes :
> >
> > [stuff deleted]
> >
> > I suspect the original disk that was slow to start wasn't getting
> > enough power to spin it up to speed quickly.  It took about 15 seconds
> > to get started.
> > 

Nope, No power supply is going to be THAT slow, forget it.
Far more likely is that your controller thinks it's got another drive
(hard or floppy) which is not there, but it waits around in case it's
one of the old ones which did take up to a minute to spin up before it
can finally be sure that it really doesn't exist.
My SCSI controller does much the same, only in that particular instance
there is no cure, it is quite possible for a single partition (maybe a
huge one under DRDOS or DOS4.x) to bridge more than one single drive,
do that DOS only sees one 200MB partition, though the controller knows
there are 2 x 100MB drives. SCSI drives are, of course a type 0, so
the controller has to find out for itself what is actually attached to
it...

Dave E.