BOOTPROM DIAGNOSTICS - NO ERRORS
Analog Processing LED (= Unable to load software from disk) stays lit briefly while seeking the HD, but goes out when the unit loads the OS from floppy so I assume this is fine.
Master - Special Emax Diagnostics - NO ERRORS
1. Bank RAM Test
2. ERAM Test
3. RS-422 Test - didn't test
4. Wr/Ver Fl Test
5. Ver Fl Test
6. Panel Test
7. Filter Trims - didn't test
HD Diagnostics - #1. SCSI/Echip & #5 Show Results gave no errors. Merely selecting any remaining option (2,3,4,6,7) immediately gave Hard Disk Error.
1. SCSI/Echip
2. Read Only
3. Read/write
4. Burnin HD
5. Show Results
6. Show HD All
7. Media Defects
Using a variety of Linux and Windows boot disk utilities, I tried testing, wiping and reformatting the 4 hard drives that my Emaxes simultaneously gave up on when this first started a few weeks ago.
1 old quantum pulled from a 68k mac reported having 0 sectors (something I'd never seen before) and wouldn't let me reformat or do anything with it at all. I am pretty much done with it and will assume it is a bad drive.
However, the other three drives, 2 Miniscribes and a different Quantum drive, all reported No Errors, and all were able to be wiped and reformatted multiple times using disk utilities in Windows and Linux.
Still, NONE of the Emaxes were able to format these 3 drives.
Using EMXP, I wrote an HD image complete w/ OS and banks to the drives. NONE of the Emaxes were able to boot, read or perform any HD diagnostics on these 3 drives w/ an Emax image already on it.
My 1 remaining good Miniscribe still boots, reads & writes fine in all 4 Emaxes; however I refuse to try to format it, copy the Plus OS to it, or run diagnostics on this drive as I don't have another solution just yet should it go tits up as well.
So, it feels like I am back to square one. Some things point to the drives, yet 3 of them check out ok w/ disk utils, can be formatted, and can be read and written to in Windows w/o issue. And other things point to the Emaxes, but taking the one good drive and putting it into the other 3 Emaxes works fine.
The only other thing I am considering is getting a friend to reformat the 3 drives for me in a Mac w/ an Apple Partition Map since I know the Emaxes tend to "like" older Mac disks. In windows/dos I tried Fat12, 16, 32 and HFS to no avail.
- Jim