The Weirdest Thing on earth!

[otheos]

Ok, this is not imediately related but I hope you'll excuse me.

Yesterday I opened my linuxbox (an old P90 on an Intel triton FX mobo) to install a new heatsink+fan for the summer. It was a mess with all the cables blocking the air circulation so I took all the IDE cables (two of them) and folded them in four (sort of rounded them but didn't cut anything) so instead of a flat wide (you know how it looks) cable I end up with 1/4 the width. I've done this in my other PC's with no problems.

First: The boot disk would give me instead of "LILO boot:" "LILO ot:" and then cannot move block etc etc, so I unfolded the cable and everything run as before.

Second: The second IDE has two HD's one master on slave. Suddenly the system froze with the HD led lit. I rebooted and on of the HD's could not be detected buy the bios. So I took everything apart and started looking around. What I found?

BOTH DRIVES BECAME MASTER NOMATTER WHAT THEY ARE SET FOR!!!!!

I tried them in another machine, the same. When they wer both on the same IDE only one of them was found. When another HD was with one of them it was only found by the BIOS if set to slave (as slave) or cable select (as slave).

[Jmc_uk]

that not very weird really.......

[otheos]

why not?
Is it normal for HD's to turn into master permanently after cable rounding?
ever heard of anythink like this before?

[This message has been edited by otheos (edited 06-15-2000).]

[Ultima]

Well,

I also have 2 hdd's from my 486's and if I hook em up to my second system, everything goes wrong.

It blocks out my master, making itself master, and cdrom it sees, but can't use!!
On their own, they are fine, but don't put anything else on it!!!

SH*TTY old hdd's, although they are 512Mb, wanted to use em for Mp3 storage, but I guess not.

Pim

[otheos]

But they worked perfectly for 4 years, one master the other slave until yesterday....

[Ultima]

I don't know how that can be either, did ya try putting everything back the way it was??

I'm sorry, I ain't no techie.

Pim

[Obsolete]

Maybe you accidently cut one of the wires in the IDE ribbon when you were rounding it.
Try the two hard drives and the rounded cables in a different computer and see if they do it(or try different IDE Ribbons in the computer that has problems).
If so then you ruined the IDE ribbons

[otheos]

The cables are ok, and the IDE channels are ok too. It's just the two HD's that only work as masters in all three different systems I tried them (with different cables).
Also the original master developed a couple of bad clusters so something went wrong. The other one (a seagate 210MB '93 model) still works but only as master.

I do not particulary care for the HD's the were really old anyway and due to be replaced. It's what happened that I'm curious about. Anybody ever heard of anything similar? I started suspecting cosmic rays and stuff.... LOL

[tepo]

The Truth Is Out There...

Tepo/Chris Carter

[DaGrizz]

otheos
Cant explain how or why your problem happened but I will bet you have a bad ribbon cable.

I had similar problems with hard drive not being recognized and bad data once i got running again. I had just removed the cables to re-route for better air flow and installing second hard drive when my problem came up. The cable looked fine but after trial and error and replacing cable with NEW one the problem went away.

[dexmax]

hmmmm...

are you sure of your settings??? i'm not saying you set it wrong, but still double check.

it happend to me once when i thought i got it to master instead it i set it at cable select.

other than that, i think it your cable. if not maybe you just got a bad connection/conduction at the connectors.

[Speed]

I had a similar problem and I thought I had checked everything! After 3 days of taking everything apart and putting it back together, I took my computer in to get checked, I just couldnt figure it out! $75.00 bucks later, I found out I had a bent pin in the back of my HD. Its something simple, take your time and look for the real obvious. Check your pins bud.

[KillerBug]

the cables wer eprobably real close to their ends, just bending them could have broken the last leads in some of the wires.

[otheos]

The cables are ok, I checked with other cables and they are still master. They are master all the time everywhere I tested them, so it's definetly a HD issue. Checked the pins, all there. The HD's work perfectly, but only as master. So if you put one of the HD's on the IDE channel it's picked up by the BIOS as master. Put one more HD (a good one) as master and set the problematic as slave, the problematic shows up as master the good one (which is actually set as master) does not get picked up. Set the good one as slave (both drives are now set as slaves) they are both picked up, the problematic as master the good one as slave.
In other words no matter what you do these two HD's are always master!! Like if someone wrote it in the firmware "ignore the jumpers you are always master".

More? When I put the two drives on, (they are set as master slave as the originally were before this happened) it is the slave that shows up as master and the other one is not picked up (no matter in which order in the cable I put them). So the old slave became a "stronger" master than the old master. And this is in all systems with different cables or the old cables or anything. And if you just put each one individually on the IDE channel, they work ok.

[fvay]

I think its the MATRIX
suspect the agents

[otheos]

lol