But wait, it gets worse.... Nope, it wasn't a cosmic ray. Something still isn't right. That disk went dead yesterday afternoon. Same symptoms, different drive. On bootup, the Maxtor label reported by the firmware got transformed into Laxtnr and reports half the capacity. Uh oh. we've got a bad bit. It's not the drive at all - it's the cable. But the same bit is there elsewhere. Intermittent connection on one of the timing lines. Yucko. Pulled that out and dropped another in. Now both previously fried drives are humming nicely. Linux installs without a hitch. But I'm pretty jaded. I've pretty much rebuilt the computer in the last few weeks, except for the motherboard. Wonder how long it will last until that goes... To be fair, this is the very same IBM clone computer I started with 15-20 some odd years ago. Everything has been replaced three or four times now. Well not quite. It still has the original 5-1/4 diskette and I'm still using the same keyboard.