HH drives

From: Rob O'Donnell <classiccmp.org_at_irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Sun Apr 13 04:54:01 2003

I've used a number of Wyse 286 & 386 machines in the past (as
servers). Early machines did not have a BIOS configuration program built
in - you had to boot a setup floppy. (I *might* still have one kicking
about somewhere in the old discs at the office, if you need it; might also
have some manuals.) If the battery went, then you need to set it up again.

They mostly used fixed disc parameters, from which you selected the one
closest to your drive, and with no "user definable" mode. I also had a lot
of disc failures in those days. (I remember one particularly memorable day
trying to read that one last sector off a dead disc on an old machine, in
desperation dropping the machine 3", upside down, timed exactly right - and
it read it!)

Discs were usually st306? Three cables from a controller to the discs - one
shared between drives, one each per drive. Floppy drives run from same
controller. Seperate cards for Parallel+Serial (or parallel + 2 serial)
video, etc.

Has yours got that natty (but impractical) LCD display on the front?

regards

Rob.





At 17:49 13/04/2003 +1200, you wrote:

>On Sunday, Apr 13, 2003, at 16:45 Pacific/Auckland, Don Maslin wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, Alan Greenstreet wrote:
>>>Can anything be done to revive these disks or were they left unparked
>>>and now physically damaged?
>>>
>>>I have another 5.25" hard drive displaying the same unresponsive
>>>characteristics... are they all dead?
>>
>>Have you gone into the BIOS to see what the settings are for the
>>drives? Does the clock/calendar work properly? If not, the
>>battery may be dead and settings incorrect.
>>
>> - don
>The BIOS reads date 1980 so the battery may be an issue. Using fdisk I can
>read the partition table and the attributes of the disk.
>A small victory: Through persistence I can now read the data in the
>extended partition but it is quite unreliable (sometimes reads sometimes
>not) - the disk makes a _lot_ of noise and quite obviously wants to be
>left alone...
>Not to be outdone I will try Spinrite.
>
>Another question - is it worth trying to save? Has anyone got any
>information on Wyse Technologies machines?
>The google thing didn't bring up much other than another collector stating
>it was a 386 server???
>
>Thanks
>
>Alan
Received on Sun Apr 13 2003 - 04:54:01 BST