performa 6360 HDD troubles

[Livingroom]

seems no matter what i stick in this thing, the HDD goes undetected after awhile. i can get 3 OS installed, 7.6.1 8.6 and 9.1 and then power it off, if i unplug it from the wall it "forgets" it has an HDD, sometimes have to reboot it 100 times or boot an installer CD etc and eventually it will "detect" the HDD again.

this is using IDE HDDs, IDE<>sata HDDs, and Ide<>sata SSD. one time i let it sit at the flashing floppy question-mark for like 30 minutes and all of a sudden it just started booting.

sometimes i can pull the front panel off, unplug the HDD, turn it on, turn it back off, plug the HDD in, and it's good to go.

does anyone have any clue whats going on?

 

[volvo242gt]

Is there a PRAM battery in it? If yes, do you know that it's good? Kinda sounds like it's losing its settings if it gets unplugged. Next time it tries to do this, maybe do the command-option-shift-delete keystroke and see if you can force it to boot from the drive. Then, for a PRAM battery fix, maybe a three-AA or AAA battery holder with some batteries, attached to wires going to the board's connector. Velcro it to the back panel...