[LIB] Help - 70CT won't access FDD or HDD

[John Pallister]

Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 18:38:28 +1300
From: John Pallister <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Help - 70CT won't access FDD or HDD

Hi,

I've just inherited a 70CT from a friend, who said I could keep it if I could un-wedge it. He's actually getting married next month, so I'm hoping to fix it up for him and give it back as his wedding present. ;)

The problem is, it seems unwilling to access either the floppy or the (2.1GB) hard disk. Even the F12/BIOS upgrade procedure doesn't work; when I press a key, it will spin the floppy disk and then beep.

When I boot it with no HDD in, it will ignore the Esc key (if pressed) and the FDD, sit there for a few minutes, and then say "Insert system disk and press any key". While still completely ignoring the floppy drive.

When it boots from the HDD, it tends to just sit there with the cursor flashing, which I gather means it's trying to de-hibernate, or something. This is independent of the relevant BIOS setting. If left long enough it will re-hibernate (with the associated animation), although I think I've persuaded it to stop that.

The HDD boots (Win98 from a Win95 boot menu) fine on another PC. The BIOS is 6.30, but the HDD was "born and bred" in the Libretto, so I there shouldn't be any conflict there. I'd try flashing 6.20 (and/or 6.40), if it would let me.

This behaviour is not completely repeatable; I'm sure I even got it to say "NTLDR not found" at one point... Other times it will sit there beeping for a while, or keep rebooting itself every few minutes...

What else? There's no RAM expansion, upgraded thicker disks or anything else I've read about in the archives of this list that could be a problem (AFAIK). I'm not averse to obtaining another system board from somewhere (Hi, Martin!), but obviously if there is anything I can try, up to and including the old "debugging by soldering iron" tactic, I'd be very keen to hear people's suggestions.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

John :^P
--
John Pallister
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




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