UPDATE: HELP!!! ][e suddenly having problems!

[dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Dave Althoff)]

Thanks for all the suggestions (and offers of deals on new hardware if I
couldn't get the thing working...)!

I got the machine working again.  The problem?  Let me recap--

The problem was that my ][e wouldn't boot; if I switched drives around,
the machine would boot, but Drive 2 wouldn't work.  So I managed to
isolate the problem to one drive of the pair of Disk ]['s.  The drive
sort-of worked, but the recalibration noises sounded really weak.  I was
misled briefly by the fact that Drive 2 has a very hollow, almost
weak-sounding noise to it even when it is working perfectly, and I
suspected a CPU power problem.  So I swapped the power supply, but had no
success.

A closer examination of Drive 1 (the one that didn't work right) revealed
that the ribbon cable was slightly damaged at the point where it attaches
to the connector which connects to the controller card.  An email
conversation from the ever-so-helpful David Empson tended to confirm my
diagnosis...he indicated that off the top of his head, those first few
wires are the stepper-motor phases.  Well, that sounds likely...

So today I hacked off the end of the cable and replaced the 20-pin IDC
connector.  And now the system works fine.  Well, except for a somewhat
intermittent "-->" key, but I wrote a whole procedure for fixing those... 8-)

Thanks for all the help!

]Dave Althoff, ][.
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