Thanks Colin - I'll see if I can give the time to try your suggestion - but all those screws and stuff tends to put me off :) Always been a software man rather than hardware. One theory I had from some of the research was it that it was something to do with ACPI. Other oldish Toshibas have had similar fates. Its only a guess, but I suspect "suspension" writes something to the disk that Toshiba BIOS/boot relies upon not being messed with -- so the boot bits and the BIOS become corrupt. I suspect both need fixing. Oddly, or not, the disk refuses to be seen by a windose vista machine Dave G
> Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:08:02 +0100 > From: Colin Law <clan...@googlemail.com> > To: UK Ubuntu Talk <ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com> > Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] Toshiba Portege P4010 - BIOS Bad Block 3 > Message-ID: > <CAL=0gluthjawnrd6q0b6qpyyrgggooxt4nufyvxhf6urkuq...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On 17 October 2011 17:44, David Goldsbrough <da...@boavon.plus.com> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> Up until Friday I was happily runnng Ubuntu on subject machine. ?It >> has never managed to do a restore before, and I have always shutdown >> and re-booted whenever softaware updates requested it. >> >> I have never tried ever to suspend it or hibernate it, due to bad >> attitude on my part as I regard this function as "fancy-dan stuff". ?I >> also suspected it would never be able to cope on the basis that if >> "restart" never worked then suspend or hibernate never would either. >> >> On Friday though my "wisdom" got the better of me and I tried to >> suspend it. ?Boy, did it sulk. ?It just went dead! ?Any attempts to >> re-boot it results in an error message "BIOS(Block3) is damaged! (call >> user serviceman.) ?Serviceman: Place maintenance disk in drive and >> press any key when ready." >> >> I have spent the weekend on and off researching the net and trying a >> few things. ?It would seem that I am unable to access the BIOS at boot >> time. ?Pressing F2 is the normal access method but I have tried the >> ESC key and the left-shift key. ?The DVD drive is not accessible and >> there is no floppy drive. ?I do have a usb read-only floppy drive >> available but I suspect the usb ports are not operable either. >> >> I did see some reference to getting a boot floppy and altering some of >> the bytes with a hex editor which somehow fooled the BIOS and then >> allowed the BIOS to be flashed. ?I never pursued this solution as I >> could not think (or did not have the means) of achieving. ?I also had >> some doubt whether it would work. ?I could find nobody who had >> actually really fully solved the BIOS error. >> >> The machine cost me less than ?50 some years ago, but I loved it so >> much! ?It was my Ubuntu/linux learning platform. ?Is it time for the >> scrap heap? > > You could try taking the BIOS battery out for a minute or so (assuming > it has a BIOS battery - it will be a coin type cell. that should > force the battery backed ram back to default values, if it is that > that has got corrupted. It may be worth shorting the battery contacts > on the board with a screwdriver after removing the battery (the > contacts on the board, not the battery itself), that will ensure the > circuit is fully discharged. You should get a message saying the ram > has been defaulted when you switch on again. > > Otherwise I suppose it could be the BIOS flash itself corrupted, but > how that could happen as a result of suspending is beyond me. > > Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
