"BIOS problem" solved
 

22-9-2014 I started a thead "Subject: how can BIOS boot priority settings
change all by itself??"

Today customer had bootproblems again. Message: diskdrive failed.
Couldn't believe that because I had fitted a new drive.
I booted into the BIOS setup and was baffled when I saw the detected drives.
Where I expected the name of the new drive to show up, I saw a string of
strange characters.
Couldn't believe the drive had died again.
Now I decided to open the case and examine the SATA cable. I took off the
cable at both ends and reconnected it.
After this the PC booted fine again.

So those of you who suggested the cause is bad cable connection were right!



--


|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

"BIOS problem" solved
 

Hi, Mark.

I took off the cable at both ends and reconnected it.

Ah, yes, the old "Pink Pearl" treatment. ;)

Shades of the TRS-80! ;^{

Way back in 1978, when we had unexplained glitches, we would unplug cables -
usually from edge-cards in those days. Then we would give the edge card
connectors the "Pink Pearl" treatment: we would "erase" the film of fine
debris from the edge-card teeth using a pencil eraser, with Pink Pearl being
the most common brand name for such erasers. Then we would plug the
connector back onto the edge card and...problem solved. ;) Often we
didn't even need the eraser; just unplug the cable and plug it in again,
letting simple friction remove the film. That simple solution still works
surprisingly often. ;)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3528.0331) in Win8.1 Pro with Media
Center


"Linea Recta" wrote in message ...

22-9-2014 I started a thead "Subject: how can BIOS boot priority settings
change all by itself??"

Today customer had bootproblems again. Message: diskdrive failed.
Couldn't believe that because I had fitted a new drive.
I booted into the BIOS setup and was baffled when I saw the detected drives.
Where I expected the name of the new drive to show up, I saw a string of
strange characters.
Couldn't believe the drive had died again.
Now I decided to open the case and examine the SATA cable. I took off the
cable at both ends and reconnected it.
After this the PC booted fine again.

So those of you who suggested the cause is bad cable connection were right!



--


|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

"BIOS problem" solved
 

"R. C. White" wrote in message
...
Hi, Mark.

I took off the cable at both ends and reconnected it.

Ah, yes, the old "Pink Pearl" treatment. ;)

Shades of the TRS-80! ;^{

Way back in 1978, when we had unexplained glitches, we would unplug
cables - usually from edge-cards in those days. Then we would give the
edge card connectors the "Pink Pearl" treatment: we would "erase" the
film of fine debris from the edge-card teeth using a pencil eraser, with
Pink Pearl being the most common brand name for such erasers. Then we
would plug the connector back onto the edge card and...problem solved.
;) Often we didn't even need the eraser; just unplug the cable and plug
it in again, letting simple friction remove the film. That simple
solution still works surprisingly often. ;)

It shouldn't be happening with modern standardised cables.

"Linea Recta" wrote in message ...

22-9-2014 I started a thead "Subject: how can BIOS boot priority settings
change all by itself??"

Today customer had bootproblems again. Message: diskdrive failed.
Couldn't believe that because I had fitted a new drive.
I booted into the BIOS setup and was baffled when I saw the detected
drives.
Where I expected the name of the new drive to show up, I saw a string of
strange characters.
Couldn't believe the drive had died again.
Now I decided to open the case and examine the SATA cable. I took off the
cable at both ends and reconnected it.
After this the PC booted fine again.

So those of you who suggested the cause is bad cable connection were
right!

"BIOS problem" solved
 

Rod Speed wrote:


"R. C. White" wrote in message
...
Hi, Mark.

I took off the cable at both ends and reconnected it.

Ah, yes, the old "Pink Pearl" treatment. ;)

Shades of the TRS-80! ;^{

Way back in 1978, when we had unexplained glitches, we would unplug
cables - usually from edge-cards in those days. Then we would give
the edge card connectors the "Pink Pearl" treatment: we would "erase"
the film of fine debris from the edge-card teeth using a pencil
eraser, with Pink Pearl being the most common brand name for such
erasers. Then we would plug the connector back onto the edge card
and...problem solved. ;) Often we didn't even need the eraser; just
unplug the cable and plug it in again, letting simple friction remove
the film. That simple solution still works surprisingly often. ;)

It shouldn't be happening with modern standardised cables.


As I understand it, this is a connector retention problem
or a kinked cable problem.

First generation cables have absolutely nothing to hold them in
place. The connector body didn't provide a compression (interference)
fit. SATA cables would regularly fall off, due to vibration.

This happened, because the dudes at SATAIO were spending all their
time designing the perfect "SATA backplane connectors". That allows
disk drives to be plugged into slots in a server. Such as the 24 bay
"things" you can get for servers, to hold drives. Those have a
SATA backplane in back, and the carefully designed SATA connectors
are inside the box.

For the desktop, they just decided to "saw that connector in half
and send the plans to China". Without even checking whether this
was a good fit for desktop systems or not.

Later, some of the little people in the industry decided to
fix this stuff. So the connector body got deformed a bit,
to provide a compression fit. And later, the "metal jaw" thing
was added. The metal jaw thing has to be designed, so if the
mating member isn't available on the other end, the parts don't
conflict.

I got a new motherboard with jaw-equipped cable, and it would not
fit on my WD branded hard drive. So I had to fall back to the
simpler cable (deformed body). Thus, there are at least two retention
features available, and sometimes both features are on the same
connector. And this is all because the SATAIO committee didn't
test their original design before shipping it. (Otherwise, they
would have noticed how bad it was.)

The contacts are gold on gold, which relies on a "wiping" action
rather than the "biting" action of tin on tin. Since the gold is so thin,
erasers are no longer recommended for "reconditioning" the contacts.
The gold is so thin (10u instead of 50u), there might already be
pinholes in the finish. If you must clean such a connector, try
isopropyl alcohol and a lint-free cloth. I would not recommend
anything stronger than that.

The SATA cable should not be bent until it kinks. This has an impact
on the dielectric insulation inside the cable. And can change the
cable impedance. It's more likely to be a problem, if one conductor
is kinked and the other one is not. When the cable changes direction,
try to make a "rounded corner" in the cable, not a pinch. I'm still
waiting to see an eye diagram or a TDR picture of a kinked cable,
to see just how bad bending them is.

And use some care when disconnecting a cable from a motherboard.
There was one brand of motherboard, with vertical connectors, where
the manufacturer didn't affix the connector body to the board very
well. A user would tug on the cable, and pull the connector
right out of the motherboard. Later connectors were fastened a bit
more securely than that.

Paul

"BIOS problem" solved
 

"Paul" schreef in bericht
...
Rod Speed wrote:


"R. C. White" wrote in message
...
Hi, Mark.

I took off the cable at both ends and reconnected it.

Ah, yes, the old "Pink Pearl" treatment. ;)

Shades of the TRS-80! ;^{

Way back in 1978, when we had unexplained glitches, we would unplug
cables - usually from edge-cards in those days. Then we would give the
edge card connectors the "Pink Pearl" treatment: we would "erase" the
film of fine debris from the edge-card teeth using a pencil eraser, with
Pink Pearl being the most common brand name for such erasers. Then we
would plug the connector back onto the edge card and...problem solved.
;) Often we didn't even need the eraser; just unplug the cable and
plug it in again, letting simple friction remove the film. That simple
solution still works surprisingly often. ;)

It shouldn't be happening with modern standardised cables.


As I understand it, this is a connector retention problem
or a kinked cable problem.

First generation cables have absolutely nothing to hold them in
place. The connector body didn't provide a compression (interference)
fit. SATA cables would regularly fall off, due to vibration.

This happened, because the dudes at SATAIO were spending all their
time designing the perfect "SATA backplane connectors". That allows
disk drives to be plugged into slots in a server. Such as the 24 bay
"things" you can get for servers, to hold drives. Those have a
SATA backplane in back, and the carefully designed SATA connectors
are inside the box.

For the desktop, they just decided to "saw that connector in half
and send the plans to China". Without even checking whether this
was a good fit for desktop systems or not.

Later, some of the little people in the industry decided to
fix this stuff. So the connector body got deformed a bit,
to provide a compression fit. And later, the "metal jaw" thing
was added. The metal jaw thing has to be designed, so if the
mating member isn't available on the other end, the parts don't
conflict.

I got a new motherboard with jaw-equipped cable, and it would not
fit on my WD branded hard drive. So I had to fall back to the
simpler cable (deformed body). Thus, there are at least two retention
features available, and sometimes both features are on the same
connector. And this is all because the SATAIO committee didn't
test their original design before shipping it. (Otherwise, they
would have noticed how bad it was.)

The contacts are gold on gold, which relies on a "wiping" action
rather than the "biting" action of tin on tin. Since the gold is so thin,
erasers are no longer recommended for "reconditioning" the contacts.
The gold is so thin (10u instead of 50u), there might already be
pinholes in the finish. If you must clean such a connector, try
isopropyl alcohol and a lint-free cloth. I would not recommend
anything stronger than that.


Is that what's sold as 'contact cleaner'?



The SATA cable should not be bent until it kinks. This has an impact
on the dielectric insulation inside the cable. And can change the
cable impedance. It's more likely to be a problem, if one conductor
is kinked and the other one is not. When the cable changes direction,
try to make a "rounded corner" in the cable, not a pinch. I'm still
waiting to see an eye diagram or a TDR picture of a kinked cable,
to see just how bad bending them is.

And use some care when disconnecting a cable from a motherboard.
There was one brand of motherboard, with vertical connectors, where
the manufacturer didn't affix the connector body to the board very
well. A user would tug on the cable, and pull the connector
right out of the motherboard. Later connectors were fastened a bit
more securely than that.



thanks for your historical overview.
As I wrote, the MB and cable aren't exactly new. Do you have links to
pictures of the connector types you mentioned above? I understand they are
not exactly compatible?
For the moment this computer boots OK, but I'm still thinking about getting
a new cable and I don't want to buy the wrong type.
The MB is SATA II, and I believe nowadays the standard is SATA III, if that
makes any phisical difference.
BTW I never pull at the cables, I always pull the connector itself.
There are no sharp bends in the cable, but I suppose that's no guarantee
that there isn't any invisible micro crack somwhere in the cable.



--


|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

"BIOS problem" solved
 

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rod Speed wrote:


"R. C. White" wrote in message
...
Hi, Mark.

I took off the cable at both ends and reconnected it.

Ah, yes, the old "Pink Pearl" treatment. ;)

Shades of the TRS-80! ;^{

Way back in 1978, when we had unexplained glitches, we would unplug
cables - usually from edge-cards in those days. Then we would give the
edge card connectors the "Pink Pearl" treatment: we would "erase" the
film of fine debris from the edge-card teeth using a pencil eraser, with
Pink Pearl being the most common brand name for such erasers. Then we
would plug the connector back onto the edge card and...problem solved.
;) Often we didn't even need the eraser; just unplug the cable and
plug it in again, letting simple friction remove the film. That simple
solution still works surprisingly often. ;)

It shouldn't be happening with modern standardised cables.

As I understand it, this is a connector retention problem

Yes, normally, particularly early on.

or a kinked cable problem.

Hardly ever.

First generation cables have absolutely nothing to hold them in place. The
connector body didn't provide a compression (interference) fit. SATA
cables would regularly fall off, due to vibration.

Or due to someone poking around in the case.

This happened, because the dudes at SATAIO were spending all their time
designing the perfect "SATA backplane connectors".

Not really. Clearly that problem was fixable and was fixed.

That allows disk drives to be plugged into slots in a server. Such as the
24 bay "things" you can get for servers, to hold drives. Those have a SATA
backplane in back, and the carefully designed SATA connectors are inside
the box.

For the desktop, they just decided to "saw that connector in half and send
the plans to China". Without even checking whether this was a good fit for
desktop systems or not.

That isnt what happened.

Later, some of the little people in the industry decided to
fix this stuff. So the connector body got deformed a bit,
to provide a compression fit. And later, the "metal jaw" thing was added.
The metal jaw thing has to be designed, so if the mating member isn't
available on the other end, the parts don't conflict.

I got a new motherboard with jaw-equipped cable, and it would not fit on
my WD branded hard drive.

I've never had a problem with my samsungs.

So I had to fall back to the simpler cable (deformed body). Thus, there
are at least two retention features available, and sometimes both features
are on the same connector. And this is all because the SATAIO committee
didn't test their original design before shipping it. (Otherwise, they
would have noticed how bad it was.)

The contacts are gold on gold, which relies on a "wiping" action rather
than the "biting" action of tin on tin. Since the gold is so thin, erasers
are no longer recommended for "reconditioning" the contacts. The gold is
so thin (10u instead of 50u), there might already be pinholes in the
finish. If you must clean such a connector,

You shouldn't need to.

try isopropyl alcohol and a lint-free cloth. I would not recommend
anything stronger than that.

Any of the small molecular weight alcohols are fine.

The SATA cable should not be bent until it kinks.

That's true of any signal cable like that.

This has an impact on the dielectric insulation inside the cable. And can
change the cable impedance.

Cable impedance just isnt a problem with digital signals.

It's more likely to be a problem, if one conductor is kinked and the other
one is not. When the cable changes direction,
try to make a "rounded corner" in the cable, not a pinch. I'm still
waiting to see an eye diagram or a TDR picture of a kinked cable, to see
just how bad bending them is.

Its not normally a problem, they just don't get kinked that much.

And use some care when disconnecting a cable from a motherboard.
There was one brand of motherboard, with vertical connectors, where
the manufacturer didn't affix the connector body to the board very
well. A user would tug on the cable, and pull the connector right out of
the motherboard. Later connectors were fastened a bit
more securely than that.

A lot more securely in fact.

"BIOS problem" solved
 

"Linea Recta" wrote in message
...
"Paul" schreef in bericht
...
Rod Speed wrote:


"R. C. White" wrote in message
...
Hi, Mark.

I took off the cable at both ends and reconnected it.

Ah, yes, the old "Pink Pearl" treatment. ;)

Shades of the TRS-80! ;^{

Way back in 1978, when we had unexplained glitches, we would unplug
cables - usually from edge-cards in those days. Then we would give the
edge card connectors the "Pink Pearl" treatment: we would "erase" the
film of fine debris from the edge-card teeth using a pencil eraser,
with Pink Pearl being the most common brand name for such erasers.
Then we would plug the connector back onto the edge card and...problem
solved. ;) Often we didn't even need the eraser; just unplug the
cable and plug it in again, letting simple friction remove the film.
That simple solution still works surprisingly often. ;)

It shouldn't be happening with modern standardised cables.


As I understand it, this is a connector retention problem
or a kinked cable problem.

First generation cables have absolutely nothing to hold them in
place. The connector body didn't provide a compression (interference)
fit. SATA cables would regularly fall off, due to vibration.

This happened, because the dudes at SATAIO were spending all their
time designing the perfect "SATA backplane connectors". That allows
disk drives to be plugged into slots in a server. Such as the 24 bay
"things" you can get for servers, to hold drives. Those have a
SATA backplane in back, and the carefully designed SATA connectors
are inside the box.

For the desktop, they just decided to "saw that connector in half
and send the plans to China". Without even checking whether this
was a good fit for desktop systems or not.

Later, some of the little people in the industry decided to
fix this stuff. So the connector body got deformed a bit,
to provide a compression fit. And later, the "metal jaw" thing
was added. The metal jaw thing has to be designed, so if the
mating member isn't available on the other end, the parts don't
conflict.

I got a new motherboard with jaw-equipped cable, and it would not
fit on my WD branded hard drive. So I had to fall back to the
simpler cable (deformed body). Thus, there are at least two retention
features available, and sometimes both features are on the same
connector. And this is all because the SATAIO committee didn't
test their original design before shipping it. (Otherwise, they
would have noticed how bad it was.)

The contacts are gold on gold, which relies on a "wiping" action
rather than the "biting" action of tin on tin. Since the gold is so thin,
erasers are no longer recommended for "reconditioning" the contacts.
The gold is so thin (10u instead of 50u), there might already be
pinholes in the finish. If you must clean such a connector, try
isopropyl alcohol and a lint-free cloth. I would not recommend
anything stronger than that.

Is that what's sold as 'contact cleaner'?

That varys, but often is.

The SATA cable should not be bent until it kinks. This has an impact
on the dielectric insulation inside the cable. And can change the
cable impedance. It's more likely to be a problem, if one conductor
is kinked and the other one is not. When the cable changes direction,
try to make a "rounded corner" in the cable, not a pinch. I'm still
waiting to see an eye diagram or a TDR picture of a kinked cable,
to see just how bad bending them is.

And use some care when disconnecting a cable from a motherboard.
There was one brand of motherboard, with vertical connectors, where
the manufacturer didn't affix the connector body to the board very
well. A user would tug on the cable, and pull the connector
right out of the motherboard. Later connectors were fastened a bit
more securely than that.

thanks for your historical overview.
As I wrote, the MB and cable aren't exactly new. Do you have links to
pictures of the connector types you mentioned above? I understand they are
not exactly compatible?

They are with decent hard drives.

For the moment this computer boots OK, but I'm still thinking about
getting a new cable and I don't want to buy the wrong type.

They arent that expensive, get more than one and try it.

The MB is SATA II, and I believe nowadays the standard is SATA III, if
that makes any phisical difference.

No it does not with the connector.

BTW I never pull at the cables, I always pull the connector itself.

Yeah, that's important.

There are no sharp bends in the cable, but I suppose that's no guarantee
that there isn't any invisible micro crack somwhere in the cable.

That's quite uncommon due to the physics of the cables.

"BIOS problem" solved
 

In message , Rod Speed
writes:
[]
I've never had a problem with my samsungs.

Sounds painful!
[]
Any of the small molecular weight alcohols are fine.

The SATA cable should not be bent until it kinks.

That's true of any signal cable like that.

This has an impact on the dielectric insulation inside the cable. And
can change the cable impedance.

Cable impedance just isnt a problem with digital signals.

If it wasn't, you wouldn't be worrying about kinks above. It's an
analogue world - especially at the sort of frequencies we work at these
days. But even back in the days of 10 megabit ethernet, impedance was
relevant (75 ohm coax, IIRR). That's why, ideally, you had terminators.
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

All humanity is divided into three classes: those who are immovable, those who
are movable, and those who move! - Benjamin Franklin

"BIOS problem" solved
 

Linea Recta wrote:

thanks for your historical overview.
As I wrote, the MB and cable aren't exactly new. Do you have links to
pictures of the connector types you mentioned above? I understand they
are not exactly compatible?
For the moment this computer boots OK, but I'm still thinking about
getting a new cable and I don't want to buy the wrong type.
The MB is SATA II, and I believe nowadays the standard is SATA III, if
that makes any phisical difference.
BTW I never pull at the cables, I always pull the connector itself.
There are no sharp bends in the cable, but I suppose that's no guarantee
that there isn't any invisible micro crack somwhere in the cable.

Here is a picture summary.

http://i59.tinypic.com/2vbrjns.jpg

The Western Digital drive in the lower right hand corner, the
connector still fits. But the metal "latch" feature has nothing
to engage on, on the WD drive. This is because the WD drive has
extra clearance between the housing and the connector tabs.
The cable still grips a bit, but doesn't have quite the
interference fit of the red colored cable. The red colored
cable, only the distortion of the connector body holds the
connector in place. And some of those red cables, press a
little too tight. Using compression as a method, relies
on tight tolerances when molding the connectors. I have a
set of cables here, which pressed so tight, plastic gets
scraped off the cable connector body on each usage.

You may find some motherboard connector, that doesn't like the
metal-work on a fancy modern cable. I don't have a large enough
collection of computer crap, to give examples.

You can use the connectors with the metal latches. And some motherboard
connectors mate nicely with the metal latch. But I've discovered
at least one hard drive here, where the metal latch "tooth" has
nothing to grab onto. The cable still stays in place, because
the connector body is still an interference fit. Just not a
super-tight one.

One of the reasons the back of the WD drive is so goofy looking,
is WD attempted to market their own cable assembly. It consisted
of a monolithic "block" with both power and signal in the same
connector. As well as a "square part" that fits in the square hole
in the WD drive housing. So that's the history of how the WD drive
housing ended up that way. It was to help WD sell their cable
assembly. The sample Seagate drive in my picture, is just designed
for the more average cabling. Seagate didn't try to sell a special
looking cable. The Secure Connect was WD's answer to the first gen
cables falling off. It's an inventive solution, but I bet WD
wishes they hadn't done that now. I don't expect they made
that much money on the cables.

"Western Digital Secure Connect cable"
http://www.legitreviews.com/images/r...al_secure3.jpg

Paul

"BIOS problem" solved
 

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Rod Speed
writes:
[]
I've never had a problem with my samsungs.

Sounds painful!
[]
Any of the small molecular weight alcohols are fine.

The SATA cable should not be bent until it kinks.

That's true of any signal cable like that.

This has an impact on the dielectric insulation inside the cable. And
can change the cable impedance.

Cable impedance just isnt a problem with digital signals.

If it wasn't, you wouldn't be worrying about kinks above. It's an
analogue world - especially at the sort of frequencies we work at these
days. But even back in the days of 10 megabit ethernet, impedance was
relevant (75 ohm coax, IIRR). That's why, ideally, you had terminators.
[]

OK, here's a couple waveforms. The smooth one is what the unbent
cable will look like. The one with ringback, would be when
the cable is kinked. Try as I might, including the word "SATA"
in my Googling, does not dig up actual SATA waveforms for me to post.
So I have to make do with whatever waveforms I can find.

http://ts4.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.6080...5&pid=15.1&P=0

http://www.micron.com/-/media/images...d_data_eye.png

That's the kind of measurements I'd want to see, if bending
the cable and studying what kind of a difference it makes.

The smooth waveform in those examples, shows the pulse template
on the screen at the same time as the waveform. The dark blue diamond
in the center, checks eye closure. The top and bottom blue rectangles
check for overshoot. The waveform is automatically normalized to fit
in the scope window (so you don't have to adjust the gain and offset
knobs on the scope). The pulse template is met by TX and RX designers,
and is an "agreement" as to what their end has to do, in order to work.
So you check your design (disk drive or motherboard), to see if it is
making the right quality of waveform. If the waveform touches the
template, it doesn't mean "instant death". But if two marginal pieces
of equipment get connected together, the room is hot, the +5V voltage
feeding the equipment is low, there might be transmission errors. Passing
the template means you have some margin against conditions like that.

I would want to see the kinked cable tested, to see how much
waveform distortion results from kinking one of the two conductors.
Kinking both of them the same amount, while it degrades the waveform,
might not be as effective as kinking just one conductor.

The SATA cable is a miniature dual twinax (one pair for serial TX,
one pair for RX). And when I say "kink", I'm referring to the
compression of the shield around one of the two conductors in
that pair. The twinax conductors are differentially terminated
at the receiver, in 100 ohms or so.

(SATA cable cross-section)
http://www.satacables.com/assets/images/IMG_188353.jpg

Paul