560Z empty HDD

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

All,
Many of you were kind enough to advise me when I was trying to make
the USB port work. One suggestion was that I use an adaptor to plug
the HDD into my PC, but in doing that I obviously got it wrong at one
point and blew the HDD electronics.
I've now got a new HDD (IBM Travelstar DADA-26480 6.4GB) and have
*very* carefully tried again. This disk is empty. I formatted and
installed W98SE, but have got "non-system disk" message in the laptop.
The web suggests "SYS C:", but that doesn't work.
Anyone got any advice? It doesn't half make me feel thick...
Thanks,
DAH

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

On Sun, 07 Aug 2005 11:49:17 -0700, mike <spamme0@netscape.net> wrote:


>You can try fdisk /mbr.
>I've had similar problems with a travelstar drive out of a 560. My
>consultant suggests that travelstar drives must have the bios manually
>set to "large" to make them work. Auto detect just don't do it.
>Then you'll have to fdisk/format/install all over again.
>I haven't had a chance to try it yet.
>
>Just curious, what's the symptom of the blown electronics on the hdd?
>I've plugged drives in backwards without ill effect.
>mike

Mike,
My boot floppy doesn't have fdisk, but I'll check that one out. I'm
pretty sure I've tried it, but maybe only on my XP attempt, which I
thought was doomed anyway and which I didn't mention (W98SE was my
fallback strategy).

The symptom of the blown drive was a siren, which caused some
disbelief (look for 560Z with author DAH in the past 3 months on
Google advanced search http://groups-beta.google.com/advanced_search -
topic "IBM HDD siren & Error 174" ). There is a small brown ring with
black centre which looks like a tweeter, though of course I can't tell
if it's a speaker. IBM manuals give no indication of any siren, but
it's a series of triplet "whoop, whoop, whoop" repeated, like a police
siren. Very strange, and definitely, unquestionably, programmed, not a
bearing or head-crash noise.

The adaptor I have has 2 electricity wires on the pins opposite Pin 1
- I suspect that, since there is no indication on the drive which is
Pin 1, I accidentally connected the cable backwards and fed
electricity into Pin 1 and fried it.

I have *enormous* problems getting into the BIOS. The IBM manual says
to hold F1. I do, and it boots anyway. By tapping it frantically I've
managed a few times to get in, but it's not a normal BIOS (hello,
IBM...), it has a graphical front end which is less than helpful. I'll
try that again - all I can say is that the previous drive had a
working (apart from USB) W98SE, and this is from the same source, so I
imagine that the parameters will be identical.

Thanks for your advice.
DAH.