possible head crash :-(

[Gary Trujillo]

Well, it may have finally happened.  Last night before going to bed, I
snapped the keyboard back onto its retaining posts as usual - and the
screen suddenly went to the pattern of all dots, though the phone,
window, and screen managers all continued to run.  The mouse moved the
arrow cursor, but clicking did nothing - as did (not) the keyboard.

I was effectively "dead in the water."  I tried rebooting, both with the
reset button, and with a power cycle.  All I got was repeated little
squares in the upper left-corner of the screen, and sounds of the disk
attempting to recal.

The floppy diagnostics produced:

  Test: Hard disk test (Drive 0)
  Subtest: Read all the disk.
  Pass: 4
  Error: WINCHESTER: Error on check - Read Response=40, Start Block=5080

I dissasembled the machine - completely, to check all the connectors, etc.
I removed the hard disk from the chassis.  A visual inspection revealed
nothing.  (I'm not claiming taking the machine apart was logical, but hey,
it was 6 AM, and I may not have been thinking clearly.)

After reassembly, the diagnostics produced the same result.  BTW, the
random seek test went OK.

I was able to boot UNIX from the floppy and mount /dev/fp002.  The file
system looks OK, but when I tried doing an fsck, I got:

  CAN NOT READ BLOCK 2 (or some such)

I suspect what happened is that there was a head crash with the heads
positioned over track zero.  Now that I think about it, it never was
a good idea to insist on having the keyboard locked in place while
I sleep.

Is it curtains for my 67meg miniscribe?  (I think I may install the WD2010
while I have the machine open, though I don't harbor any illusions
about doing to being able to solve anything.)

If I do lose the disk, I'm gonna have a heck of a time getting stuff off
the disk, since I know of no way to write to the floppy while running
single-user UNIX running off the floppy.  I have a spare machine with
a 10 meg drive, and may be able to pump stuff through the serial ports,
but it's not going to be fun. :-(

Any ideas, sympathy, etc.?

Please respond via email to:

	gst at ursa-major.spdcc.com or gst at wjh12.harvard.edu