Mines in the Superstition Mountains

[Tyroler]

Whats on in the Mountains in Januar/Februar?
Anyone doin activity there?

[djui5]

This guy and a friend were hiking somewhere in the Supes, maybe near Weaver's Needle, and as soon as they passed a certain point, this helicopter came zooming toward them seemingly from nowhere, landed, and two armed guys got out and started walking toward them. They beat a hasty retreat. He seemed to believe it had to do with Jesuit gold stashes that are being protected and watched over by some secret group in Vegas (I think). If I ever find the site again, I'll post the URL.
Bob

Bob,
if you find that I would really like to read the story. Any idea if the chopper was a small black one? Is the group possibly from Reno?

Jim,
I've hiked up Horse Mesa a couple of times and around the edges a few times. It's beautiful country up there. If you wanna know anything let me know. I'd post pictures but they are all on a drive that crashed.

[Jim Hatt]

djui,

I sure would like to see those photos. Rex Western (Maptech) probably would too. He has been interested in that area for a long time. Have you ever seen any monuments up in that area?

If it was only the operating system that crashed on that hard drive, you might be able to hook it up as an external drive through a USB port, and recover some of the data files and photos from it.

I know some neat tricks for recovering data from bad drives.

I have done it for Tom Kollenborn more than once.

Jim

[djui5]

I gotta see about getting this drive fixed. It has all my Dutchman research on it. The read/write heads quit working so I need to send it off to have the heads replaced. Very $$

[Jim Hatt]

djui,

It has been my experience that when that happens. It is often caused by a broken solder joint, where the four wire power supply connector, is soldered to the circuit board.

There are 4 comparatively large solder joints on the circuit board. Plug a connector into the power supply socket, and wiggle it while observing the solder joints for any movement or cracks in the solder. If you observe a problem. Just re-solder the joints, and you may have it up and running again.

Jim

[Pharo]

I gotta see about getting this drive fixed. It has all my Dutchman research on it. The read/write heads quit working so I need to send it off to have the heads replaced. Very $$

Is the drive making loud clicks and a kind of booing sound after it heats up? If yes then the actuator is going and I know a trick to get your data off the drive. Use a long ribbon cable and setup the drive as a slave. Lay the drive (hooked up but outside of the computer) on a flat surface and put a glass of ice water on top of the drive. This will keep it cool and extend the time you have to copy the data to another drive. I've been able to keep failing drives going for up to an hour doing this trick and recovered all the data.

Some people think I’m crazy for mixing ice water and hard drives but really you have nothing to loose if the drive is already failing.

Good luck,

PBiZ

[djui5]

djui,

It has been my experience that when that happens. It is often caused by a broken solder joint, where the four wire power supply connector, is soldered to the circuit board.

There are 4 comparatively large solder joints on the circuit board. Plug a connector into the power supply socket, and wiggle it while observing the solder joints for any movement or cracks in the solder. If you observe a problem. Just re-solder the joints, and you may have it up and running again.

Jim

Wow thanks Jim, I'll have to check that out.

Pharo,
No it wasn't doing that. Gave me some errors and then just quit working altogether. I couldn't even see the disk in DOS mode before I just unplugged it and bought a new computer.

[Pharo]

Pharo,
No it wasn't doing that. Gave me some errors and then just quit working altogether. I couldn't even see the disk in DOS mode before I just unplugged it and bought a new computer.

Is the drive even spinning up when it gets power? Can you see the drive from the CMOS?

Later,

PBiZ

[Jim Hatt]

djui,

Something else that I completely forgot about.

Input- Output "I/O" errors are often caused by bad ribbon cables. If it is an old cable that has been plugged in and removed a number of times. They get stretched, and loose around the pin connectors where they make contact with the wire in the cable. They can run fine for a weeks until there is a sudden change in temperature or humidity, and wham-o! I/O Error! Sometimes you can reseat the cable plug and get it going again, but it keeps coming back with temp/humid changes.

Have you tried a new ribbon cable on it?

Jim

[djui5]

See the drive from CMOS? Not sure how to do that, never heard of it before.

Jim,
I had hooked the drive up to another computer through an external case and it did the same thing, so the ribbon cable wasn't the problem. I called one of the computer places and they told me it sounded like the read/write heads had failed. That's a mother to fix because you have to find an exact drive and swap the platters, in a clean room. Still can't believe I never had a backup of this drive considering it contains so much valuable information. All my Dutchman research and 90% of the pictures I've taken in the last 5 years.

Sorry for hyjacking this thread.