mbates14
Member
I have a compaq portable 2. it has a type 2 hard drive in it.
I dont have any clue as to what controller system it uses. it looks like the drive itself is MFM, but then there is a piggyback board on the bottom of it, which uses a single IDE like cable (key pin in different spot, so cant use IDE). and says Winchester on the controller card.
The drive itself is a MiniScribe 8425.
never heard of it. but anyway, i formatted up a compaq setup disk to set the bios to type 2 (battery dead).
When the machine restarts, powers up. the drive spins up, and the head will seek across the disk, and return back to its home position on the stepper servo opto-interrupter.
but as soon as the BIOS tries to test/access the disk, the disk makes a funny chopping noise, and returns back to home. and keeps repeating this cycle. I watched the stepper servo, the chopper noises is the servo doing a single step at a time. it will single step across the entire platter, and return back to home. and repeat this cycle. it will do this like 10 times before the bios reports Hard Disk 0 error.
is the drive shot? or will a low level format save it? if the heads were bad, it wouldnt pass the power up check? only does it when bios accesses drive.
I dont have any clue as to what controller system it uses. it looks like the drive itself is MFM, but then there is a piggyback board on the bottom of it, which uses a single IDE like cable (key pin in different spot, so cant use IDE). and says Winchester on the controller card.
The drive itself is a MiniScribe 8425.
never heard of it. but anyway, i formatted up a compaq setup disk to set the bios to type 2 (battery dead).
When the machine restarts, powers up. the drive spins up, and the head will seek across the disk, and return back to its home position on the stepper servo opto-interrupter.
but as soon as the BIOS tries to test/access the disk, the disk makes a funny chopping noise, and returns back to home. and keeps repeating this cycle. I watched the stepper servo, the chopper noises is the servo doing a single step at a time. it will single step across the entire platter, and return back to home. and repeat this cycle. it will do this like 10 times before the bios reports Hard Disk 0 error.
is the drive shot? or will a low level format save it? if the heads were bad, it wouldnt pass the power up check? only does it when bios accesses drive.