From: FRANK NEEDHAM (fmn@nevada.edu)
Date: 11/14/92


From: fmn@nevada.edu (FRANK NEEDHAM)
Subject: B Drive Hanging
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1992 08:16:41 GMT

Hi all,

Don't quite know where to start, except to say that do to the level of skill
knowledge displayed on col this seemed like a good place to present my problem.
Please forgive the obvious lack of connection to col.

Today my machine arrived in the post and after setting it up, I started fidd-
ling with it. Right off the bat I screwed it up. In my rush to get started
I inadvertantly left a dos system disk in the a drive and tried to boot a Linux
boot disk form the b drive at the same time. It seemed as if this corrupted the
boot sector on the hd, so I reformatted using the AMI BIOS hd utility.

After booting and loading dos, I then tried to boot Linux and found that the
B drive won't read the disk (any disk, for that matter). I did swap the conec-
tions and edited the cmos but to no avail :-(. Another curious thing is that
if both ribbon connectors are attached *neither* drive will read or boot, :-(.
On the other hand, if only the a is connected it works fine (too bad the a
drive is 1.2mg 5.25, otherwise I could boot Linux).

Again, please forgive the out of context post. For some time now, I've been
following this group and would like to become a Linuxer soon.

configuration follows; 486-33
                       200 hd, 8mb RAM, 1.2 and 1.44 Teac floppies
                       Local Bus IDE Cache Controller Card w/2mb RAM
                       ET-4000 Local Bus 1mb vga card
                       at i/o card

Thanks to anyone who might have a clue as to what would cure this problem.

-frank
fmn@redrock.nevada.edu