10u tells me that it is a 10 microfahrad or just fahrad, and so it must be a capacitor. Though I am not an electronics expert, so I might be wrong on this. Voltage would be exactly what you suggest. Again... I am not an electronics expert.

For the LZone and WPcomp... Hmmm... If it is an IDE, then try and see what a computer say, that has HDD autodetection, when you detect it. It should give you all the numbers. Sometimes it is written on the drive it self, and sometimes you can find the numbers, by googling the drive you have on you'r hand. Else you can try and set it to the largest in the BIOS, and then install a drive overlay, if the drive is greater than 425mb.

In the past, I have done this procedure when running an 640mb Conner on my Unisys 286.

Thank you! I'll install the drive to another computer and see what it reports with auto detect. Perhaps some program like HDTune can tell me more. Nothing is written on the hard drive sadly, only Kyocera KC-40GA.

Justin1091 wrote:

Kyocera KC-40GA

That was the keyword, you might find something with these links....
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/k … -HH-IDE-AT.html
http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgar … h/2000/1934.htm

I ordered two caps (in case I fail to install one correctly). I think it's not a ceramic capacitor, but a tantalum one.

I did find the first website you sent me, but the other one I didn't know about. Will be useful, thanks. Someone over at reddit explained the LZone and WPComp stuff, but the two links you sent don't give the values needed. Maybe the disk doesn't need those two values to be input? I'll try inputting a 0 for WPComp and LZone once I fixed the IDE expansion card.

I'll post updates here next week after I tried these things.

Tantalum caps explode when they go, so it's probably just a cap reaching end of life. New one should fix it right up.

Also just leave LZone and WPComp at 0, works fine without it.

yeah, 99,999% this was a 10μF 25v tantalum cap that exploded , replace it with another of the same ratings and you'll be fine

Interesting thing to note about cap ratings, you don't need in most cases to put in one of the exact same type. In terms of voltage rating, you can go greater or equal to the original part. Capacity in MOST cases can be greater or equal as well. It's just normally a matter of not going below.

Depends what the cap is being used for. Increasing capacitance can result in higher inrush currents, inferior control response when in a feedback loop, etc. Increasing capacitance within a limited range is generally okay, though, as electrolytic capacitors often have sloppy tolerances to begin with, and quality components are designed with that in mind.

Hey guys,

An update.

Replacing the cap fixed the card. It works flawlessly now. I still have trouble with the hdd though. I can't boot from it so I used a DOS 4 shell diskette and I could browse it. I noticed it has an old utility folder on it with drivers. Because they might come in handy I want to copy them. It's 20 mb so very large.

I put the hdd in another pc to copy the contents but I'm getting sector errors from xcopy. Maybe the chs, LZone and WPcomp are incorrect. The internet links don't mention the LZone and Precomp values. Auto detect tells the drive is 49 mb which is incorrect.

Anyone have suggestions on how to copy these drivers from the hdd? I was thinking about a zip drive but it's drivers are too big to fit on a 1.44mb diskette.

Any more suggestions about the Precomp and LZone?