unbootable HD, the solution

[monte single]

You wrote;
"failures were
common whereas now
they are
rear."
I think we know what you meant.

Scott Howell wrote:

> 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.
>
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