Hi,
I have a bit of an issue with some old Shugart 8" (801) drives. These drives were imported from the US, and incorporate an AC transformer to power the drives.
The unique thing about the AC power supply is that it uses the mains frequency to spin the drives at a certain speed. As you may know US power is 110V @ 60Hz which allows the Drive should spin at 360rpm. In NZ the power is 220 @ 50Hz. It's easy enough to use a step down transformer for the voltage, but the frequency is a different story. 50Hz means the drive spins at 300rpm, not 360rpm
I've been looking into solutions, including:
- fabricating new pulleys and sourcing new drive belts
- Using a US inverter to convert 12V DC to 110V @ 60Hz AC, but need to find a grunty enough 12V PSU to handle the load.
- Other solutions seem to be large and industrial based, and extremely expensive.
I was wondering if anyone else has come across a similar problem and have found an affordable solution.
I may add that the drives actually work, but the disks they create can not be used on any other system, and archiving of these disks using something like Dave Dunfield's ImageDisk is not an option as the disk is unrecognisable as all the data is compressed.
Thanks for listening.
Phil