unbootable HD, the solution

[Scott Howell]

Ah, this reminds me of a very interesting problem I ran into.
Mind you this is from the days when most chips were socketed and 
actually cost some money. Yes, this was an old 386-SX 25 I was running 
my bbs and Fidonet mail service on.
I bet some of you remember Fidonet, BinkleyTerm, node lists, RBBS, 
Maximus, Opus, and so on. Hell does anyone remember bonk and the node 
list mungers?
In any case this old 386 was crankin' for its time, but it had one 
incredibly odd problem. You could put a floppy in, read, copy from it, 
and all that no problem. If you attempted to write to it the trouble 
would start. Files on the disk would disappear or the disk would just 
turn out trashed. Months went by with every possible diagnostic trick 
done and never did find the problem. I ended up deciding it was the DMA 
chip on the board, but never got a chance to replace it. Ended up 
tossing the board or giving it away I can't remember, but upgraded to a 
screamming 386-DX 33.
And to think I ran that bbs on an AST 286 with 130Mb hd and that was 
considered one of the largest bbs systems in the area. Oh yes screamming 
along at 9600 baud.<grin>
I've not heard a story yet that has surprised me about hardware 
failures. I can remember when failures were common whereas now they are 
rear.