Thinkpads Forum

hi there
i'm new to this forum but I get the feeling you all seem to share the love of thinkpads as I do... (i'm quite excited as I recently bought myself a t40 as they now have come down in price...)

well lets get to the point

i'm having some problems with an old thinkpad i have here
it's a thinkpad 560x and it has no hard drive

i'll just list the facts first:

- the bios does not detect any hard drive whatsoever
- despite not detecting any hard drive its sometimes boots!
- on a 800MB toshiba HD it boots and loads windows 98 ok
- on a 6GB IBM HD its boots to DOS but halts when there's intensive disk activity (haults when copying large files, loading windows etc)
- on this 6GB IBM HD it boots only after a CTRL-ALT-DEL reset, after failing the initial power on boot
- it does not boot to a 4 and a 6GB toshiba HDs I have here
- even after booting from the HD, fdisk sometimes does not reconise a HD
- drive fitness test doesnt recognise any drive
- hitachi's disk manager doesnt recognise any drive as well

the bios was updated to the latest version
all the HDs work fine on other thinkpads

this is the wierdest thing i've ever come accross
on the 800MB HD it works ABSOLUTELY fine... (but still unrecognised by BIOS)

i heard something about a hardware maintenance diskette
does anyone know how to get one of those? would it help?

i'd would greatly appreciate any help...

thanks

xtypestereotype wrote:...............
- the bios does not detect any hard drive whatsoever
- despite not detecting any hard drive its sometimes boots!
- on a 800MB toshiba HD it boots and loads windows 98 ok
- on a 6GB IBM HD its boots to DOS but halts when there's intensive disk activity (haults when copying large files, loading windows etc)

this is the wierdest thing i've ever come accross
on the 800MB HD it works ABSOLUTELY fine... (but still unrecognised by BIOS)....

One (most probably the device id) or more of the ide signal lines is broken or intermittent. Check the printed circuit ribbon hd connector, and if it's ok, then the offending tracks are on the motherboard in which case a replacement board would likely be the most viable solution.

but if the problem is in the cable or motherboard, why does it work perfectly on the 800MB hd?