What does HDD controller failure mean

I got a seagate st225 hdd i need to get the information off of it. I ahve taken the drive out of the computer it was currently in a placed it in a 386 it runs off a 8 bit controller card. when i boot up it runs through everything and then it goes into controller card configuration and then brings up an error 1706 0 hard drive and then says HDD controller failure plz can you help me out or tell me what the problem is?