Re: 20mb hard drive problem

["Paul Grammens" <grammens@svn.net>]

rod mckenzie <rodmcken@almaak.usc.edu> wrote in message
Pine.GSO.4.21.0007181136270.4131-100000@almaak.usc.edu">news:Pine.GSO.4.21.0007181136270.4131-100000@almaak.usc.edu...
> Have a great old Apple IIe system with 2 5 1/4 floppy drives and a 20mb
> hard drive attached.  System always booted up by turning on all save the
> central unit and it automatically went to the hard drive for start up.  On
> those occasions when it didn't and went to the floppy drives first was
> able to remove the main unit's cover, tweek the innards, blow out some
> dust, etc. and start the system again - and it always worked until this
> last spring when nothing I do seems to alert the system to the presence of
> the hard drive

Is the hard disk spinning up? A common problem with old drives is
"stiction". When the drive sits for some time, it has too much friction to
spin up. If that's the case, you can usually get it going again by giving
the drive a pop with your wrist (depending on the strength of your wrist,
and the weight of the drive! You may need to remove it from it's
enclosure. ) The principle is to use the inertia of the platters to budge
them a bit by rotating the whole drive and then reversing direction, so
hopefully the platters spin a bit. Then try applying power and see if it
spins up.

If that's not the problem, try cleaning and reseating the interface card.
Beyond that, you may need a tech to take a look at it.
-Paul