Help! IIe won't recog. disk (cont.)

[ekennedy@teleport.com (Ellen L. Kennedy)]

Earlier this week I wrote about the problem I had with my Apple IIe
recognizing a disk. 

As per the suggestion I received from Nathan Mates, I tried disconnecting
everything from that IIe except for 1 drive and the monitor. The disk
light isn't lit. There is no spinning or noise. The monitor is on. I can't
do a self-check on the CPU. It appears to be dead. 

After that, I popped the top and made sure the power supply was connected
securely. I also pressed firmly on the chips on the motherboard. I cleaned
the gold "fingers" at the bottom of the disk controller card with alcohol.
All this made no difference. Does this indicate that I need a new power
supply?

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After this I decided to try out another Apple IIe and disk drives that the
school had sitting around. 

I connected my two disk drives to the CPU and Drive #1 lit up and the disk
kept spinning and wouldn't stop. I did a self-check which gave me the
"Kernel OK" finding. 

The disk I had been using must have gotten corrupted. Next, I tried a good
disk with just the one disk drive hooked up. Drive #1 appears to be fine. 

Tried Drive #2 and red light is lit and disk is spinning.

Connected Drive #3 and get the red light/spinning disk

Connected Drive #4 same result as above

Connected Drive #5 makes a terrible noise when reading the disk, but it works

Connected Drive #6 red light on/disk spins briefly then red light just stays on

Connected Drive #7 red light/spinning disk

Connected Drive #8 it is OK

Now I have 3 working drives.

I hooked up drives #1 and #8. Turn on power and hear an electrical pop and
smelled something. Nothing worked.

Tested Drive #1 again alone and it is OK

Tested Drive #8 alone and the disk spins and spins now

I am afraid to try hooking up 2 disk drives on this Drive Card. I will use
the one drive for now until I find out what the problem is and what to do
about it.

During this testing process, quite a few disks were corrupted. I made sure
I used a good disk (which I tested with my other working IIe) with each
test. Does running a disk on a drive with problems cause the disk to
corrupt?

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Is it worth it to buy a new power supply for my IIe?
Are these drives worth repairing?
Is there something wrong with the Drive Card to cause the electrical
problem when 2 drives were connected?

I hope I have explained myself clearly, as I haven't had any technical
experience with these computers before. We have no tech support person at
my small school, so if I can't get to the bottom of this problem, I am out
of luck.

Thanks for reading this post. I know it is long.

E. Kennedy
ekennedy@teleport.com