XT-IDE maybe fried, can read and write, but cannot write MBR

[Nevets01]

So, I did a stupid thing, and in an attempt to trail my IDE-CF adapter out the back of my 5160, instead of plugging it directly into the card-connector, I attempted to use a header to connect the two male end of an IDE cable to the male IDE-CF adapter. Abut 30 seconds later, I finally smelt the smoke and realised my IDE cable had melted itself in half.
Unsurprisingly, my CF card was toast. However, my XT-IDE card seemed to work after this, and I successfully used it to read/write a text file on an already-formatted IDE hard disk. However, when I bought a new CF card and tried to rebuild my old setup, I couldn't FDISK the CF card, or edit the MBR using WIPEDISK, or DELPART or even FDISK /MBR. Same story for two other CF cards I bought from Ebay, two DOMs, and a spare 'spinning rust' hard disk.
So, do I have to buy a completely new XT-IDE, or is this a known issue, or am I doing something very very wrong?

 

[Chuck(G)]

You don't happen to have either BIOS or other software installed that prevents you from writing the MBR? That used to be a point of attack of earlier virus software. Otherwise, if you can write to a CF using your XT-IDE, there's no special-case that would prevent accessing the MBR.

 

[Nevets01]

You don't happen to have either BIOS or other software installed that prevents you from writing the MBR? That used to be a point of attack of earlier virus software. Otherwise, if you can write to a CF using your XT-IDE, there's no special-case that would prevent accessing the MBR.

Well, you were right.
Tried using my (newly-mostly-fixed) Compaq Portable II, and DELPART worked like a charm. Thank you!
-Nevets01