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Need help identifying PC

I'll have a look into that, never knew you could do such things with debug.. I'm 20 so a lot of these things are new.... to me.
Little bits day by day :)
 
Hard drive stopped working this morning.. was installing Win 3.1, and it finished. Screen went black so after a while I CTRL+ALT+DEL.. The hard disk span up when the controller initialized, then sort of dropped in RPM (by the sounds of it), then up and down, a bit like revving a car engine and then the controller said 0 disks detected.. the drive span down and the led on the front of the drive blinked on and off... Might try an IDE drive in there, it uses the same cable; only issue is that that hard drive inside had an extra cable in it coming from the controller which I'v never seen before, about half the size of a normal 40pin IDE cable
 
Don't do that. It's not the same cable, and if you do somehow manage to hook it up anyway, there's a fair chance you could fry both the drive and the controller. ESDI/MFM is not in any way compatible with IDE.

If you want an IDE drive, get an ISA IDE controller.
 
Don't do that. It's not the same cable, and if you do somehow manage to hook it up anyway, there's a fair chance you could fry both the drive and the controller. ESDI/MFM is not in any way compatible with IDE.

If you want an IDE drive, get an ISA IDE controller.
How could you possibly hook it up, even by mistake? ESDI/MFM is 34 pin and IDE is 40 pin. And, at the drive side, ESDI/MFM has card edge connectors. I don't think that even one of the morons that visits here on occasion could miss that. :)
 
How could you possibly hook it up, even by mistake?

Well, since you asked, I imagine you'd probably do it something like this:

35kq5as.jpg


Of course, you're correct that anybody who's paying even the slightest bit of attention to what they're doing would notice immediately that something's not quite right (hence my saying "if you do somehow manage to hook it up anyway"), but nevertheless, it is possible to hook an IDE cable up to an MFM/ESDI controller. :lol:

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I thought the OP was such a special sort of idiot that he wouldn't figure it out, but I've also learned over the years of working in IT, that one should never underestimate an otherwise intelligent person's ability to find new and creative ways to break a computer.
 
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Holy crap, some people have chips on their shoulders.
I had it in my head that it was a 40 pin.
Thanks Chuck(G) and modem7, helpful as always. It's working beautifully now.
 
Found out what the issue with the hard disk was anyway... this is on one of the PCBs.. :neutral:
Need to find out what type of dioide that is.. (looks like a diode anyway..)
 
That's odd, I was almost 100% sure I put up a picture...

IMG_6414_zps4f3737c6.jpg


IMG_6415_zpsc174195e.jpg


IMG_6418_zps49f53f24.jpg


That's a smaller board which plugs into the main controller for the hard disk (where the molex connector and the MFM connector is etc).
 
That acould well be a capacitor. Is there any silk-screen on the board that might identify the component? e.g. Cxxx, Dxxx, Qxxx, etc.?

Is there some cable that plugs into the 8-pin header nearby?
 
That's a tantalum cap. Those axial types are pretty uncommon, but I've seen 'em a few times before. That would also explain why it blew up... tantalums tend to do that sometimes.

It'll probably be rather difficult to read a value off it, what with it being all blown to smithereens and such, but given the size I figure it's probably a 10uf 16v or something close to it. I dunno how difficult it would be to find another axial tantalum (or a radial one with long enough leads to reach the holes), but any low ESR electrolytic of similar value should also work fine as a replacement.
 
Yeah it looks like whatever was on it has been... removed; there's an 8 pin plug right beside it. I'll have a search and see if there's schems for the board, but I doubt it
 
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