1237ab66c9e7
tech



Hello Jim - 

--8<--cut 

WC>> Tried all permutations, no joy. Lockups increased in
WC>> frequency and it sometimes no longer makes it through boot
WC>> and POST. 

JH> Well, the symptoms seem to be getting worse and worse, but
JH> - - Please clarify that. POST comes first. If it isn't
JH> making it thru POST, I think that sounds like your P.S. If
JH> it gets thru POST but won't boot, could still be either PS
JH> or HDD. See other message - - perhaps you could try a known
JH> good HDD in there? 

I've been saying it was the power supply from the start of
this. ;-) 

JH> If you have some old Norton Utilities there, one program
JH> which might be useful is SYSINFO, run from a FDD and with
JH> the "/DEMO" switch, that will repeatedly run some benchmark
JH> tests on both CPU and HDD. I think that HDD test wouldn't
JH> jeopardize the current contents of the HDD, since I don't
JH> think it does any writing. 

That loud 'click' of the hard drive is not good. Probably the
heads hitting their detent stops but could be other things. It
will eventually render the hard drive unuseable. Putting in
_another_ drive could damage two instead of just the one. 

Typically programs that 'test' the hard drive do writes. They
write to an 'engineering track' that is not used for data but
if the heads hit the detent often enough they could be out of
position enough to write to data tracks as well. 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

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