this morning

[kragen@pobox.com (Kragen Sitaker)]

Last night, I tried to get the BIOS to autotype the ATA disk I
installed, the one from the rental machine.  I failed.  This morning I
looked at it and discovered the reason: I'd put the ATA cable on only
half the pins on the motherboard connector.  (I was lucky I didn't fry
the system or the drive.  I had previously put it on backwards.)

So I put it on correctly and the BIOS was able to autotype the drive.
Unfortunately, now the BIOS wants to boot from it.  This is distinctly
suboptimal; I want to boot from my SCSI drive, which has the NT drivers
for the tape drive and the SCSI adapter on it.

Well, OK.  So I tell the BIOS the disk doesn't exist; but it doesn't
show up in NT, and NT's Disk Administrator gives me the same error
messages as before when I try to run it:

	Disk Administrator has determined that this is the first time
	Disk Administrator has been run, or that one or more disks have
	been added to your computer since Disk Administrator was last
	run.  System configuration will now be updated.

	No signature found on Disk 1.  Writing a signature is a safe
	operation and will not affect your ability to access this disk
	from other operating systems, such as DOS.  If you choose not
	to write a signature, the disk will be marked OFF-LINE and be
	inaccessable [sic] to the Windows NT Disk Administrator
	program. Do you want to write a signature on Disk 1 so that
	Disk Administrator can access the drive?

[I click "Yes".]

	An error occurred while updating disk configuration.  Drive
	letter and fault tolerance information may be lost and/or some
	partitions may be inaccessible. [They spelled it right this
	time.]

Then it shows me Disk 0, the SCSI disk, with the standard five
partitions on it, and Disk 1, with no further information.

I call Micron support.  They tell me there's nothing I can do; I just
have to live with the pain.

On the bright side, the tape drive works perfectly now that I have
switched SCSI cables.

I got home pretty late last night, about 1 AM; Marilyn and I sat up and
talked for a long time.  She decided to stay home from work today for
recuperation time.

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Thu Sep 09 1999
60 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08.
<URL:http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/bubble.html>