Compaq portable II HDD Issue.

[alexkerhead]

OK, I have tried everything in my arsenal to get this thing to boot from a hard disk, it just has too many barriers.
It came with a 20MB miniscribe, and the HDD will pass every test under compaq diag, but if you fdisk a new partition, or try to low level format it, it freezes and does nothing.
I have tried different controllers, and such, but does the same exact danged thing.
The drive spins up and sounds healthy enough, and like I said, it passed all of compaq's diag read/write/head tests.
I have tried dos 3.1. dos 3.3, and dos 5.0. Same thing, freezes at fdisk or low level format.
If I try using compaq's reconditioning format option, it freezes up as well.
All jumpers, cables, connections have been triple checked.
This situation is driving me nuts.
Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[CP/M User]

alexkerhead wrote:

> OK, I have tried everything in my arsenal to get this
> thing to boot from a hard disk, it just has too many
> barriers.

> It came with a 20MB miniscribe, and the HDD will pass
> every test under compaq diag, but if you fdisk a new
> partition, or try to low level format it, it freezes
> and does nothing.
> I have tried different controllers, and such, but
> does the same exact danged thing.
> The drive spins up and sounds healthy enough, and
> like I said, it passed all of compaq's diag
> read/write/head tests.
> I have tried dos 3.1. dos 3.3, and dos 5.0. Same
> thing, freezes at fdisk or low level format.
> If I try using compaq's reconditioning format option,
> it freezes up as well.
> All jumpers, cables, connections have been triple
> checked.
> This situation is driving me nuts.
> Does anyone have any ideas?

Just thought if this machine has a turbo switch which is on -
to turn it off, this usually leads to problems - well on my
computer it does.
Could the HD be locked to prevent writing - don't think that
should lock up the computer though?
Have you tried alternative Partition management programs?

CP/M User.

 

[USSEnterprise]

definitley not a turbo switch. Its only a 286. Is it possible that the drive head itself has simply crashed?

 

[Terry Yager]

ST-225s are notorious for 'stiction' issues:

http://www.google.com/search?source...s=RNWI,RNWI:2005-50,RNWI:en&q=define:stiction

--T

 

[alexkerhead]

Yes, I have tried different apps.
It has a miniscribe hdd, and spins up fine.
I will look into the write disable thing, maybe something there.