What?! ANOTHER HD question???

[dreamer@ods.sol.net]

Yep, me again.  I'm a never-ending question mark.  This time, however,
the questions are for a friend.

My friend has a CMS drive (Seagate mech) and a Western Digital
Preference drive that he was running on a ROM 1 with the SCSI Rev. C
card.  Unbeknownst to him, BOTH drives were terminated (the CMS
internally with the resistors and the WD externally with it's own
special type of SCSI ID/Termination selector), and he ran it for a year
or so that way before it pooped out on him.

Question 1:  Does terminating both external drives damage data, the
mech, or both?

After finding this problem, I then proceeded to go through a variety of
configurations to try and learn more about the situation.  That is,
after a year the CMS (which was the first drive in the chain) died.  I
was able to access it once a while back through ProDOS, but further
attempts were futile.  The WD has no problems...I think.  I disconnected
the WD and with just the CMS I tried to boot.  The GS tried to boot but
gave the "Check startup device" message.  I tried setting different SCSI
IDs and even checked to make sure that the SCSI card was set right.
Nothing worked any better.  I then chained the WD to it and tried again.
In this configuration the system hung with no messages until I turned
off BOTH HDs.  (Actually, that was before I found the termination
problem.)  I played around with the SCSI IDs on both HDs, with the WD
first and the CMS last (because I didn't want to remove and lose the
resistors on the Seagate mech).  In this configuration, again, nothing
happened until I turned off the drives.  I was trying to boot GS/OS from
a 3.5 at this point.  I tried different versions.  I tried other
programs, including the SCSI Utils disk and the WD util disk.  Nothing
worked.  Until I disconnected the CMS I was unable to access the WD.

To summarize:  With just the CMS I would get the "Check startup device"
when I attempted to boot from it.  With the WD and then the CMS (in a
chain) it would hang with no message when I booted from it.  When
booting from the 3.5 it would hang until I powered down both HDs.  I was
only able to access the WD after disconnected the CMS.  No programs got
me past this problem.  I ran an extensive diagnostic program that tested
various aspects of the //gs and it came through clean.

Question 2:  What to do?  Did the double termination permanently fry the
CMS, or is there some way I can reinitialize it for use on the GS again?
Any ideas would be helpful, as I've exhausted all the options I am aware
of, short of putting the HD on an IBM or Mac and trying from there.

The next question is in regards to Siders.  They had a Sider which died
a couple of years ago, and still have the controller card.  Is it really
worth it to find another Sider to use with the card (I personally don't
think so considering the advanced age of any working Sider) or would it
be better to sell off the card to someone who needs it and get a SCSI
card and HD or IDE card and HD?  What is a good asking price for the
card?

Thanks for all the help, in advance!

Give what you would like to receive,
Glenn
Lord Wilderness


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