Yo, Campers!
System main specs: A3000D towered in Elbox Mirage case w/300 watt PSU, DCE CyberStormPPC 233MHz w/060 50MHz & SCSI III, Elbox Mediator PCI 3000D busboard, Voodoo III graphics card, Spider II USB card, eFlash card, Fast ATA 4000 card with DVD-ROM, 128Megs FPM RAM, 2 Meg CHIP, ViewSonic PF775 17" multi-sync monitor, 9.1Gb Quantum SCSI hardrive on CyberStormPPC SCSI bus, and usual peripherals. OS 3.9, CyberGraphX v4 (registered).
Problem:
Hard-drive operations have suddenly slowed right down to a crawl. Even boot-up takes 15 minutes. Yes – 15 minutes! :-(
Background:
One bright morning last month the A3000 was powered on as usual. A few seconds into the boot process the Quantum Atlas V seemed to lose power, the drive was heard to spin down momentarily and there was a faint series of ‘click-clock’ sounds. This lasted only a few seconds, then the machine appeared to boot as normal – only extremely slowly. Booting took 15 minutes as opposed to the normal minute or so. It’s been this way ever since that morning.
Once booted the machine appears to operate OK but all hard-drive activity is terribly slow – even slower than in the miggy’s old native ‘030’ state.
Before the problem arose, the machine was working perfectly and nothing new – neither hardware nor software had been added to the system in months. This glitch just came out of the blue. Wham! There are no error messages or requesters, nor blinking power signals at boot-up. Apart from this glacial operating slow-down, the machine performs ‘normally’.
On the SCSI bus there is the Seagate (was the Quantum) at ID 0, a SCSI Zip drive at ID 5 and an old Sony CD-ROM at ID 6. The Seagate (like the Quantum) is 68 pin Ultra SCSI whilst the Zip and CD-ROM are early 25 pin SCSI I devices. These are connected to the CyberStorm’s SCSI bus cable via a series of adapters. The adapters, cabling and terminations are arranged EXACTLY as specified in the CyberStorm’s manual. This was done years ago and the arrangement has always worked perfectly.
I mention the above because both the Zip and Sony CD-ROM work normally under the current circumstance. For instance, if I copy a wad of files from either the Zip or Sony CD-ROM or FastATA DVD-ROM to RAM, the operation occurs at normal fast speed. Ditto for CD-ROM/DVD-ROM to Zip. Directory windows or listings from the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM or Zip are just as fast as ever; however, any copying/moving/deleting/reading that involves the hard drive – either as source or destination – is DEAD SLOW.
Operations involving RAM to RAM – say a RamDisk to RAM copy – are still as fast as ever.
This glitch seems to have everything to do with Input/Output to and from the hard-drive only – yet since the problem persists after a drive swap, it would appear not to be the drives themselves at fault.
Mouse cursor is fine – no slow-down there and no jerking or blinking. Clock is fine.
Things I’ve done:
Thinking the problem was a dying drive, I replaced the Quantum with a Seagate, but the swap has made no difference.
Disconnected Zip and CD-ROM from SCSI bus (and all pertinent references to them in Sys: directories) leaving just a pure Ultra SCSI bus with the one hard drive. No difference.
Checked voltages on hard-drive power plug – all OK. Even tried the PSU’s two spare power plugs – no difference.
Checked all cabling and connections – especially the SCSI set-up - all seems OK.
Checked the battery for leakage – it’s clean and working fine.
Pressed down on all mobo chips – all OK as far as I can tell.
Checked the seating of all cards – fine.
Removed and reinstalled memory SIMMs – they seem OK.
Checked for viruses using VirusZ III – program reports no bugs.
Replaced the entire Sys: directory with known good back-up. No difference.
The machine has always been kept clean. I blow all the internals down with compressed air at least once every six months. No dust nor rust! (Keep dust out of anything electronic and it will likely outlive you.)
Epilogue:
So, I’m left scratching my head over this one. I’ve had the A3000 for about 14 years now, adding the CyberStorm/Mediator/Tower set-up 6 years ago. Never had this happen before.
Does anyone have any idea what the problem may be? Could it have some bearing on the DMA between hard-drive and memory? Perhaps a faulty chip on the mobo or CyberStorm…?
A clue, a hint, a rumination – all and any advice welcome! ;-)
Cheers, Tony McKee
