        Over the last several months I have had problems with my hard disk. I
have inquired here for advice several times as conditions changed and recieved 
help from several of you. Now the problem seems to be fully resolved so I 
thought I'd write out what happened and upload it as a file in case it might be
of some help to someone. This informmation would have saved me a lot of trouble
had I known it in the beginning.

        The basic trouble always seemed to be that sometimes the Hard Disk 
would not boot up. I could always boot from a floppy, but then could not
access the hard disk. At first, this seemed solvable by opening the computer
and reseating the HD cables at the controller card. Finally this no longer 
helped. On advice from several people, I blamed the controller ( a CHS from
Suitable Solutions) So I replaced it with a used DEC controller. For several 
days after installing this, the problem seemed to be cured.

        Then it started in again--just like in a bad movie. Over a period of
time, it got worse but for a while, I could get it to start by reseating the
cables on the back of the drive.

        Someone had told me here that there was a place on the bottom of the
drive where you could actually manually turn the shaft and and thereby start
it turning. By this time I was aware that the drive was making a lot of noise
when it did run, though it worked ok when it did run. That is, no errors. I
realized that seating the cables on the back was not the direct problem--the
movement of the whole drive (it had to be slid out and then back in again to
do this) was enough of a jog to move the motor and/or disk enough to free it
and allow it to start turning. Enough for a while. Then I had to resort to
turning the bottom of the shaft. This always worked and still does.

        This disk drive is a Seagate ST 251 40 meg from Suitable Solutions
so it had pretty good milage on it. I figured to get another one like it and
started shopping around locally and then in Computer Shopper. There I found 
lots of them advertised new used and refurbished. Also the faster ST 251-1.
I decided to go for new. After all, I already had a used one. 

        I also found an ad for something bigger--a Microscience HH 1090 80 meg
brand new. This is a half height MFM drive that I thought would format at
about 65 meg on the Rainbow. It was a bit pricey but with all that extra space,
I thought, go for it. 

        Even though I had the infromation in Jerry Miller's article on page 4
of the June, 1988 issue of Rainbow News, I did not do the arithmetic so was
dissapointed by about 10 meg. He gives the formula: (CYL * HEADS *8)/1024 =
Approximate formatted capacity in megabites shere CYL must be less than or equal
to 1024 and HEADS must be less than or equal to 8. Drives whose cylinders or
heads exceed these values can only be formatted to the limit of either value.
Note that these are approximations only. 

        This drive has 7 heads and 1314 cylinders so it comes out around 55 meg.
I'm still glad to have the extra space. There don't seem to be many MFM half
height drives over 40 meg around. Half-height is the problem. The Rainbow must
have MFM type drives which are not being made anymore and are getting scarce.

        Installation was easy. It fit right in where the Seagate was except I
had to trim some rubber off of the DEC plugs that go to the back of the drive.
No big deal. It is mounted under an Idrive--no problem. I bought it from 
jb TECHNOLOGIES of Moorpark CA. They were courtious and very fast in shipping.
I paid 340.00 plus tax and shipping. Perhaps too much to spend on an old
"Classic". I used WUTIL 3.2 for fomatting, partitioning, etc and even installed
FASTBOOT.

        If you use FASTBOOT, be aware that if you have a CLIKCLOK it won' work
in the autoexec.bat with the Turbow on. At the CLIKCLOK command I preceed it
with "Turbow off" command and follow it with "Turbow on". That only eats about
a half second of the time saved and the CLIKCLOK works like it's supposed to. 
I hope this helps someone with drive problems.  Dick Hagen 72426,736