First post, by Nipedley
Hi guys
I'm trying to revive an Amstrad PC7386SX motherboard but can't get it to work with any hard drive. I've tried multiple IDE cables of various vintages, and drives ranging from a 640MB Quantum Bigfoot to 8GB Maxtor's and CompactFlash adapters which is what I'm really intending to use here. There's no 'Auto' in the BIOS so I have to set cylinders/heads etc. manually
All I get on boot is 'Fixed Disk Controller Failure', usually accompanied with a brief flash of the activity light from whatever drive I have connected.
I'm thinking the easiest way to get around this is fit an ISA controller, as I have a spare 16-bit ISA slot. Would getting something like the XT-IDE compactflash card be a good idea, or just any period 16-bit ISA IDE controller?
If you have any other suggestions for things I can try to get the onboard controller working I'm all ears !