Off topic: hardware tip

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

If this spares anyone else some premature gray hairs, you're welcome. If
a drive--hard, floppy, CD, ZIP, whatever--starts acting flaky, one of the
first things one should try is changing the cable. (Of course, make sure
you replace the cable with one of the same type, and check before
removing the old one to determine which side is Pin 1--the colored edge
of a ribbon cable.) Also beware of the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter
hoc ("after this, therefore because of this"). Remember a few days ago I
said that turning off power management caused the partition table to
disappear? Well, that may have been the first landslip of a cascading
failure of the IDE cable.
Patricia