Beth,

I'm pretty sure that you're having a spinning up/power up problem. Your
hd isn't by chance a Seagate Barracuda?

I had exactly the same problem with a DecRZ29B (which really is a
Barracuda simply labeled Dec) on a IIci. Powering the computer up, I
had a flashing mark, which then, after 15-20 secondy disappeared and
the computer started correctly from that hd. Now, since the power
supply of a IIsi is even weaker than those of the IIci, imagine what
could happen . . .

At those times I discussed the problem with the Seagte tech guy on CIS
and according to him, a Barracuda even on the IIci would need a more
powerful power supply. Anyway, if you can access some other power
supply, even of a pc, you could check this way, whether or not it is a
power up problem. Moreover, try to get the jumper scheme, may be you
can change the spindle up time of the hd.

OS 7.6 will handle even 4 GB easily, I think.

Good luck, Ulrich

PS. That hd now works happily in a Quadra 950 (which has an enormous ps).

On 4:36 Uhr +0200 01.07.1999, Beth Sundheim wrote:

> I've tried a couple of solutions, including booting the IIsi from
>external
> disks running various flavors of System 7 (7.1, 7.5.1, 7.5.3, 7.6)
>with and
> without Pseud040 installed (which I thought might expedite matters); in
> most of these configurations I can get the internal hard drive mounted to
> the desktop, but upon restart I'm always stuck with a flashing question
> mark. Drive Setup maintains that the problem is in a limitation of the
> currently installed system software, but I suspect that 7.6 should be
> perfectly capable of handling a disk of this size, and that the
>probelm is
> actually elsewhere. Can anyone suggest a workaround--a patch or a clever
> trick which will let my IIsi use this magnificent large disk? I'd be very
> grateful for your insights.