Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tekigm2!neals
From: neals@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM (Neal A Sedell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: slow starter
Keywords: booting, hard disk
Message-ID: <8426@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM>
Date: 27 Feb 90 23:46:33 GMT
References: <906@tuewsd.lso.win.tue.nl> <1990Feb7.202324.22394@seri.gov> <912@tuewsd.lso.win.tue.nl> <603@marvin.moncam.co.uk>
Reply-To: neals@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM (Neal A Sedell)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Vancouver,  WA.
Lines: 24

>> > 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.

I vote for #2 - my XT clone would take FOREVER (it seemed) to boot with
1 hard disk.  After testing RAM it would flash the access light for the
disk then go into limbo for about 30 seconds before trying to read the
floppy.  Since I've had two drives (1002A-WX1 controller BTW) it accesses
both drives then immediately goes to the floppy, timing out in about 5
seconds then booting off C:.  Much nicer, too bad I'll have to get rid
of the original drive to put the full-height drive in and will be back
to coffee break boots.  Maybe if I could rig up a dummy board to return
READY and/or Seek Complete on drive select 2....
-- 
# Neal Sedell     (206) 253-5280	W e
# aka   neals@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM	M a k e
# Tektronix, Inc., Delivery C1-936	D i g i t i z e r s
# PO Box 3500, Vancouver, WA  98668	(and Fast Data Caches)