I just got a German Mega STe this past Friday, and it arrived in great shape, fully working, with a 50MB hard drive installed. The first time I booted it up, it had no problems, but the second time, the German TOS ROM refused to boot, giving me a message that, I assume (I can't understand German very well), was telling me it couldn't find a boot medium. I installed English TOS 2.06 ROMs later, and when I got them booting, the hard drive was simply absent from the desktop. I've tried a couple of drive formatting utilities, one from Atari and one from ICD, but the Atari one says something about the drive not being supported (and mentions getting a replacement wincap file?) and the ICD one says it can't determine the size of the drive (even though I can choose ST-157R from the list, which I think should work, since the drive is an ST-157N). The first time I booted the computer, I could swear I heard the hard drive heads seek as the drive powered up, but it doesn't do that any more.
So first of all, do you guys think the hard drive's dead, or did it just get corrupted somehow and I don't have the proper formatting utility?
Second, if the hard drive is dead, I feel like it's probably something on the logic board, since the platters are still spinning (although I suppose it's also possible that the stepper motor that drives the heads went out). Does anyone know anything about repairing these? The drive LED still flashes when anything tries to access it.
Third, if I had to get a new drive, what would be a good, inexpensive option? I noticed a guy that has a bunch of Quantum ProDrive ELS SCSI drives on eBay for around $20 apiece, would those work? They appear to be 80MB models that were probably originally in Macs (there is an Apple sticker on the front of the drive in the picture).
If those options don't pan out, the guy that sent the Mega STe to me has offered to send me another drive, but I'd really like to save this drive, if possible.