fv1609

My Christmas presents to myself. Fascinating reading. The trouble is that the one in the red binding seems never to have been read & I am causing the spine to crack. I am reading it by only opening it by 60 degrees, in a similar way one might glance at something in the newsagents hoping your mother doesn't turn around! Even so it is progressively cracking thereby devaluing it. But a book is a book it contains knowledge & not to read it is a denial of its very purpose. Just keeping it solely as an investment seems as repugnant to me as seeing the proud delight of the owner of a child's toy still in a box because it has never been played with, kinda sad.

Caught red handed!

I'm writing this as Reply with Quote, which I think it is doing although it calls itself Quick Reply. I could get used to it, not a big deal. Ah preview is not so easy will have to go into Advanced for that. Yes that was ok in Preview. Only problem of leaving it like that it might tend to make us less likely to check what we write before posting. I have had to correct about a dozen of my dyslexations in this short piece alone!

I have to say £150 seems rather pricey considering the rubbers might be many many years old. £50-£60 is often the going rate for NOS, granted the rubbers may be in the same state, but a repair kit with new items is not very expensive.

Well I floundered around in BIOS & tried not to upset anything. I always find it is very difficult to get out of BIOS & never quite sure the way I did it was the safest. That kit looks to have the best selection of bits & pieces & comes with a manual. I looked at Maplin & they had various machines but not a lot of info to help the buyer if you don't know why you need to buy it. They were in the £40 region so £9 odd inc P&P that looked promising. Although if I waited I could have had something from Hong Kong for about £3. The last time I ordered something from HK it came in less than a week, which I thought was pretty good & it cost a quarter of the price for the same thing in the UK. Anyway GE thanks for your help & to Lee who has also been helping me.

Yes Tony help yourself. For equivalents see: http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/POLcompact.pdf

I think it is fairly warmed up by now. Even after the freezer the only moisture I could see was on the large metal pieces. Anyone I've been into the BIOS & not seen anything I can set there. Lee put me on to various reading devices so I've ordered this that might come in handy in the future. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260499552064

Eivind I have been collecting & cataloguing British Army documents for some years now & I'm sorry to say I have never come across anything that specifically relates to the Mk2. There is a wealth of information on the Mk 1, although it was only retrospectively called that, like the Series 1 Land Rover was just called Land Rover. The first documents for the FV2381 appeared in 1978 with various modifications going on until 1988. I suspect the Mk 2 by PAROTOW incorporated these modifications & may have been produced in relatively small numbers. I have detailed indexes for these publications, the latest one I have is 2003. But there is no individual entry for Mk2 as having specific documents of its own.

But Tony you wouldn't normally expect to find such information in military publications like those. Servicing info is normally contained in the Servicing Schedule because servicing requirements may be subject to change & in particular POLs may be superceded. A Servicing Schedule is a stand alone authority for all the servicing tasks for the equipment. Being a small flimsey unbound document it was relatively easy to reprint without the difficulties of amending a formal document like a parts book or user handbook. I have lost the front page to this one but I attach Table 1 just to verify what it applies to.

GE Many thanks, seems worth a try!

Finn, I was afraid you were going to ask that! This is where people will no longer speak to me. I have to confess I have all of these documents. I don't mind copying the odd page if there is something you are stuck on, but I don't have the time to spend scanning. The trouble is I have over 4,000 British Army technical documents & understandably there is a lot of stuff that on a regular basis people would like me to copy but I simply don't have the time. There are a few companies that reproduce documents but for their efforts they want to sell a significant number. These sort of ambulance documents are not going to sell in huge numbers even assuming they are aware they exist let alone posess them. There would most certainly be the EMERs at the REME Museum & they may have some of the others. Places like Brooklands mainly have civilian books. I know they have the LightWeight UHB reprinted but I think there is a chunk of stuff missing in that even. So I don't think they would even know want an EMER was. I do try to share the info as & when I can. I hope you found the two links to the Ambulance CES & ETS on HMVF. But ask the REME Museum they are your best hope: http://www.rememuseum.org.uk/archive/index.htm

Yes. The defective drive is partinioned with the OS in one bit & the files in the other. As the OS wil not work from it, I cannot use that PC. So the working PC I am on now has the defective drive also plugged in, with the hope that this PC would at least see the defective drive so I could at least lift the files out of it. But there is no recognition that this extra drive is on it. Normally I would have expected messages flashed up about new hardware found. But it doesn't seem very interested!

Finn, these are User Handbooks that I know of. Don't get too excited it is the normal 3/4 Ton UHB with an ambulance supplement: Army Code No.20906 Ambulance, 2/4 Stretcher, 4x4, Rover 9 Army Code No.22153 Ambulance, 2/4 Stretcher, 4x4, Rover 11 Modifications, Data Summaries etc EMER WHEELED VEHICLES: Q 020/7 - Q 029/7 Ambulance, 2/4 Stretcher, 4x4, Rover 7 Q 020/2 - Q 029/2 Ambulance, 2/4 Stretcher, 4x4, Rover 9 & 11 (The suffixes may seem non-chronologic, but 3/4 Ton Ambulance EMERS were redesignated from /7 to /2 in 1969) Most of the EMERs & Parts Catalogues are common with the equivalent publication for the 3/4 Ton Truck but there are some ambulance specific ones: Army Code No.20929 Parts List, Parts Peculiar Only, Ambulance 3/4 Ton Rover 9 Army Code No.22108 ISPL for Body, Ambulance, 2/4 Stretcher, 4x4, Rover 9 & 11 Complete Equipment Schedule: Army Code No.33572 CES. Ambulance, 4x4 Rover 7, 9, 11 & Series III see: http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/AC33572.pdf Equipment Table Scale Scale 01202 see: http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/ETS01202.pdf

Hmm, well there is no postable answer to that one! Sorry to disappoint, but I was refering to myself as a metaphorical youngster in the scary world of computing with the grown ups. I noticed with freezing that moisture started to appear, but it was only the bulky metallic bits. Anyway I've had it connected for most of the day to at least give it a good drying out! Just frustrated that none of the drive is recognised by this PC.

Oh crikey GE I'm sure it does, if I understood what that all meant. So you are saying those small little sockets on the drive should be ignored. Those 3 spare SATA sockets on the mother board can they be used to plug the lead for this drive for retrieiving the files. But it doesn't recognise it on any of them. Or is the only useable socket SATA0, the blue one? If it is then I lose my OS as the one on the drive under test is NBG.

It won't be rubbing. It is erosion from the spark jumping the gap, which is inevitable with time. I would just clean it sufficientlty to see clean metal, but don't try to flatten it level. Worth also cleaning the end of the rotor arm where the spark jumps from. Just rub it back & forth on some very fine glass paper etc. When you replace the HT leads in the cap don't tug at them as it is easy to snap the pins in the cap that penentrate through the cable insulation into the wires. This is partilarly likely to happen if there is a bit of corosion. Use a long fine screwdriver wiggled in beteeen the cable & the cap. Then when the tip of the screwdriver is near the end wiggle it from side to side to try to lever the cable from the pin. Also make sure your rotor arm is really nice & dry. I have seen unused mint condition ones exhibit leakage through the insulation material to the shaft. Yet I have seen far better performance from an old & grotty rotor arm. The reason the grotty one was better was that it had been out all day on a traders stall! I measured the insulation of a series of rotor arms I had. Then remeasured them after they had been left out in the hot sun all day & the leakage halved. Probably not significant with a warm running engine. But trying to get something to start, that hasn't started for a while best not to have a damp rotor arm. Now you know what a linen cupboard is for so that the spare rotor arms can keep the welding rods company:)

Adam I had a quick look around for Encase. I couldn't see the answer for a do it yourself at home programme but it all looked rather high tec & expensive. But I'm not sure how it would work with a dead drive. Neil I followed those up but even the microsoft ones relied on a floppy. Although the dead PC has a floppy drive, this working PC doesn't. Seemed a bit odd as I would have thought by the time XP came along most people would have abandoned floppies. But anyway I thought I would try the XP disc that I had from an earlier dead PC, that seemed to load up & I could feel & hear the HD wizzing with activity. But it could find no HD & gave message: PXE-E61 Media test failure check cable. I had already substituted the cable from this PC but made no difference. So I thought even if the OS is not recognised on the HD surely the files must be readable. So I plugged the HD into this PC. There is no life to it (yes I remembered the power lead!) & plug the other cable into the SATA1 socket next to the existing HD in SAT0. But no recognition of this drive being there. Is there some activation I have to perform? With older PCs with two HDs I remember there was a little link plug that had to be fitted or removed depending which was master or slave. Both these drives have small 4 pin sockets next to the other two long sockets. Should one of these have a link? Am I correct to have plugged the HD under test into SAT1?

Tony sorry I have no idea what the basic trailer type was in WW2. As for 1954, I can find no suitable trailers in my 1954 FVRDE catalogue, so presumably they were still running of the WW2 type. I guess they would have been 2-Ton rating.

GE ah yes it that was the PS that I was hoping to read. So I'm glad it will know what to do when the time comes! Many thanks to all. I have spent all day googling around getting near answers or not quite my problem. There were a few that had exactly my original problem & you follow through on a link & it has gone. Then some others say I can't launch PC all my course work is there I need it for next week then you see there were no answers & that was a post from 2002! So he must failed his course then.

Gary, I don't have any connections like that. It's not really a great loss, just some of the frivolities of the internet. The PC I am on now for 3 years had never been online & had no connection to the online PC. So I felt fairly safe with that having 3 external back up drives around the placew. But it did require the discipline of having to remember to do it. I have just taken the other HD out of the freezer after 6 hours. It made no difference. Showed up as no OS & no HD. I did insert the first of my boot CDs. Then I got this which I've never seen before. Not come across glue argument before! So I think that is a lost cause!

Yes OK. But the worry is now it doesn't look as if I can boot from USB. So although I might have the files cloned & saved, I won't be able to get at the OS. So perhaps I should fit an internal second HD & pull plugs to make it boot from that if the need arises. Bit messy though, USB would have been nicer!

Can it cope with the HD being partitioned? I have programmes on one 'drive' & files on the other part. I need to untangle whether this can boot from USB. So I'd better start up & sniff around the BIOs which always a scary place for a young lad to go into! I see there is a 30-day trial so I might go for that. Many thanks

Al why stop & boots why not repair some other things? That is if you have enough tents & trailers

Thanks both. 'Luckily' I had a crash/serious instability 2 months ago & I transferred all my internet stuff & email programmes onto here. I did a complete a re-install on the other PC after & copied it all back. But left the stuff here which I am now using. I don't think it's worth the hassle & expense as basically it is 2 months of email most of which is not that critical & images of Humbers & RUC stuff I have trawled from ebay. After I couldn't get at the files. I resigned myself to a reinstall of XP & losing everything else. I had a sneaky hope that I might recover the lost stuff, as I have a recovery programme that has been useful in bringing back deleted stuff unless it has been over written. I wonder with Casper if you have a virus get through & knocks out the primary system, if it is being so closely cloned will it not knock out the cloned system at the same time? Chris I've just seen your post. I'll follow up that. I can't be sure that the hard drive has life. It gets warm & I can feel slight hum movement inside. But I'm not sure how anything could be retrieved as this PC doesn't recognise it & the other says there is no operating system & no drive. As far as back-up goes. These fiiles are on a different partition on this drive & I back up weekly onto an external drive. Then 2-weekly I back up on to a couple of other drives stored in various other places. But if it was all being done by Casper as I go along it would be up to date, so worth me thinking about.

Googling around I find that a last ditch attempt to resurrect your hard drive is to put it in a plastic bag & stick it in the freezer for 24 hours. Has anyone been desperate enough to try that & did it work? The basis being that circuitary may contract & it might recover before it warms up. My online PC has crashed & then crashed even more! On switch on it wouldn't boot as an essential file was missing. googling found many bits of advice, but they required inserting the XP installation disc. I can't do that, as it is preloaded. The advice for that fizzles out & most sites want to sell you something. I didn't want to lose 2 months of emails & downloads (since the last crash!) I took the hard drive out & connected it to this PC. But it wouldn't recognise the drive. I refitted it back into the online PC, but now it won't recognise the hard drive either. So I assume it has died, I just wanted to retrieve the files. I don't think that I would trust the drive to run the operating system even if there was some recovery.