Thanks for the extensive reply.

The sequence of events I've tried so far are:

Try to "take over" the drive with Hard Disk Speedtools and the response was "Partition Scheme does not conform to Inside Macintosh Vol. V".

Then, tried to low level format using FWB PE and that's when I got the "device not ready" response.

Those are the only disk utilities I have, but will look for a copy of Silverlining.

Thanks again.