HD Light will not go off

[J. P. Willis]

I have a FIC SD11 motherboard holding a Maxtor hard rive. The drive
light will not go off and it will not boot. It skips the hard drive
as it tries to boot from a floppy or the CDROM.

I have changed the drive cable but it mases no difference. Could it
be that I have a bad piece of memory? There is one 512k ram module in
the machine.

Please help.

 

[Rod Speed]

I have a FIC SD11 motherboard holding a Maxtor hard rive.
The drive light will not go off and it will not boot. It skips the
hard drive as it tries to boot from a floppy or the CDROM.

I have changed the drive cable but it mases no difference.
Could it be that I have a bad piece of memory?

That doesnt usually produce that sort of symptom.

You can check the memory by booting a memtest86 CD.

There is one 512k ram module in the machine.

Please help.

I did see that set of symptoms with a short to case.

Problem went away with the motherboard run loose on the desktop.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Try the other IDE port, then test the drive in another machine or USB-IDE box.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have a FIC SD11 motherboard holding a Maxtor hard rive. The drive
light will not go off and it will not boot. It skips the hard drive
as it tries to boot from a floppy or the CDROM.

I have changed the drive cable but it mases no difference. Could it
be that I have a bad piece of memory? There is one 512k ram module in
the machine.

Whatever it is, it is _very_ unlikely the RAM. Most likely the
drive itself has some serious problem. There might be some
problem with the mainboard as well. You cahn check by disconnecting
the drive. If the LED stays on, then it is the mainboard. In that
case you will likely have to replace it. If the LED goes off,
then the problem is likely with the drive.

Arno