Somewhat OT--hdw: ECS motherboard & SBM

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2006-06-29 at 19:09 -0400, A LeDonne wrote:
> On 6/29/06, Mark Jarvis <mark.jarvis at pvmail.maricopa.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Some time ago, in a moment of ill-advised penny pinching I bought one of
> > Fry's ECS motherboard & AMD cpu specials. (I prefer AMD cpus, it's the
> > cheapo mobo that has caused me the problems I've had.) I like to have a
> > Smart Boot Manager (SBM) diskette around as an "insurance policy" way to
> > boot into the various operating systems on my box. After installing the
> > new motherboard, I found that although it would boot from an old DOS
> > diskette, it wouldn't boot from an SBM diskette. I cussed mildly &
> > accepted it. Then Tuesday, for some reason I tried again--whaddaya
> > know--it worked! I figured that I must have just had a couple of bum
> > diskettes when I tried before. Then I tried last night with four (4)
> > known good SBM diskettes--including the one that had worked on Tuesday.
> > No dice. I even burned a couple of new diskettes using the SBM on the
> > Ubuntu CD. Still no dice. If that stupid board had NEVER booted from an
> > SBM diskette, I'd just live with it, but the fact that it did boot
> > correctly ONE TIME has me baffled.
> >
> > Anyone got any ideas?
> >
> > -mj-
> 
> You did say diskette... wiht intermittent floppy failure I would
> replace the drive and the cable. My time is worth the $20 to replace
> first as a highly invasive troubleshooting technique.
----
given the reliability factor of both floppy disks and floppy disk
drives, that's reasonably sage advice except for the one other bit
advice - don't do floppies.

Craig