david@l8s.co.uk (David Laight) writes:

>> You're in need of a new doorstop, yes?  Because the drive, she is toast. 
>> The ice disk cometh.  
>> 
>> I think the horrible messages stem from the disk being discovered on the
>> bus, but then being inoperable.  If you find out differently, please tell
>> me, because I didn't actually toss mine out.  I just spent the afternoon
>> recreating it because the backup wasn't, um, ever done.  :-(
>
> Does the disk spin up? Or has the platter stuck?
>
> This can easily happen if an old drive has been allowed to get cold.
> Sometimes they can be freed by holding them in one hand by the edges
> and rotating the wrist back and forth (so the rotation is in line with
> the disk spindle).

The disk has been sitting unused for a couple of months.

I'm not sitting in front of the machine right now, so I can't
immediately check whether it actually spins up.  I might not have
noticed last time because the system boots up off a 50pin scsi disk,
which of course does make happy disk sounds.

I'll try the rotation trick tonight, thanks for the help...

Parenthetically, If I have to buy a new disk, what is the best vendor
for IDE disks these days?  It seems to change faster than I need to
buy disks.

I also have an adaptec 2940UW scsi controller I can drop in this beast
if I could find a place to get competitively priced 68pin SCSI disks.
Any ideas on this front would also be appreciated.

-russ