The machine: Power Tower Pro 250. Stock processor board with 604e/250 MHz. Reminder of stock configuration: six PCI slots, one filled with a twin-turbo video card, 50MHz interleaved memory bus, two SCSI buses (one internal, one external), single 8X CD-ROM on internal SCSI bus, and a single SCSI hard drive.
Add-ons, etc. The original SCSI hard drive failed a few years ago. As a replacement I installed a Sonnet Tempo ATA100 card. This fits a PCI slot and provides two ATA100 (IDE) buses. At the time I installed a 60G IBM drive. No software to install, and the measured data transfer rate outstripped the old SCSI by about five to one. That was two years ago. Later, added a Sony CDRW burner to the ATA bus. Also has a USB card added (no software required - the OS just recognized it), and the video card was replaced with an ATI Radeon 7000 with driver. That hardware has been functioning adequately since about March 2002. We've been running OS 9.04 since long before the hardware upgrades - about four years. ==== Symptoms and treatment: Two weeks ago, the boot time increased from 75 seconds to 20 minutes (!!) Once booted, operating times seemed normal...except on some applications running from the hard drive. Boot time from the OS9 CD, however, remained at about the two minute mark, as usual. After some investigation, I decided to use Disk Tools and the Intech tools to probe the hard drive. Apple's tools claimed they were completely unable to read the bootable volume on the drive, but they could read all other volumes. Intech's tools reported no problems found. However, consistently, access time to that one volume on the hard drive was unbelievablly slow. I unplugged the hard drive, and installed a brand-new one, still on the ATA100 bus. OS9's CD booted normally and the OS install took about 15 minutes - seems normal. But now, the machine won't read the CD-ROM connected to the SCSI bus at all, and takes about 10 minutes to recognize a CD inserted into the Sony drive on the IDE bus. Access to the hard drive, it seems, is once again sometimes OK and sometimes grinds to a halt - freezes for 5-10 minutes. Operations that do not require access to any drives function in reasonable times. Do I have a failing SCSI bus? Thanks..... Euda __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ -- Power Computing is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 123Inkjets.com <http://lowendmac.com/ad/123inkjets.html> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Power Computing list info: <http://lowendmac.com/power/list.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> List archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powercomputing%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
