Grab your Phillips, it's...
The Latest from The Screwdriver List!
> First off, I've just returned from a week in beautiful San Diego for a
> conference -- it actually rained one day, but the rest were all bright
> sunshine and 75 degrees -- so a belated congratulations to Mike Insch,
who
> correctly identified several of the improvements made to the Pentium 4
and
> won himself yet another List Guru Trivia award!
Hey Chief, glad you had a good conference... I like to hope that the
trivia questions (and their answers) will benefit the others on the
list - It's like the Open Source methodology, extended to Hardware...
Keep a'throwin' em' into the ether Chief.. :)
> Now for a hardware question that I haven't run into before: a reader
has
> just updated the BIOS on her Athlon T-Bird motherboard, and although
> everything seemed to work correctly, her CD-ROM drive is now SNAFU.
The
> drive is getting power and it will eject, but when you insert a disc
it
> simply sits dormant for a few seconds and then ejects the disc again.
I had
> her check Device Manager, where the drive shows up correctly, and even
had
> her delete the drive and reboot, but no luck. The drive was working
> perfectly before the BIOS update... but flashing back to the old BIOS
(which
> she wisely kept) still doesn't fix the problem! Has anyone run into
this?
Now, I have heard of this one before, but I'm not 100% sure of the fix.
The first thing I'd ask would be "Does the cd Drive still work on
another machine?" - if not, then I'd probably say it's FUBAR, probably
time to replace it.
If it works in another machine, then I'd ask "Does it spin up to speed
properly if the machine is powered on, and the BIOS setup program is
started?" - if it does work OK in the BIOS screen, then the drive is
fine, and It's windows - Delete (probably from safe mode) the HDD, the
CD, and all references to the IDE controllers, reboot, and let windows
do it's stuff - it's likely that the BIOS update also changed the IDE
controller firmware, which could confuse windows.
If it does work in another machine, but removing the IDE controller
doesn't work, then I'd try Flashing the BIOS on the Mainboard to the new
version with no IDE devices attached (the required software should fit
on a floppy), then boot it again, before reattaching the IDE devices and
see what happens.
I seem to recall that on some T-Bird mobos, the BIOS flash also updates
the IDE controller - in the process, in some /very/ rare situations, the
flash also turns the firmware on some CD drives to mincemeat...
However - IFF the drive has parts of it's firmware in tact (which it
must have, it's in Device Manager, it's Loading and Ejecting etc.) -
Then it /Should/ be possible to re-flash the CD's firmware, if there are
updates from the manufacturer.
HTH,
--
Regards, Mike Insch, CCA, DipHE | www.vofka.co.uk
__ _ _ | www.vofka.net
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That's all for now from The Screwdriver List
"Red Stripe to Pin 1"
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