by tezza on Sat Mar 13, 2010 10:55 am
I don't but here are some tips. You may well know or have tried these already but just in case you haven't here they are...
Firstly, check all cables for breaks, frayed wires etc. Make sure no pins have broken off. Are the jumpers on the drive set correctly for the number of drives on the machine? This might be important depending on the type of drive. It would pay look for a manual off the web if you don't have one.
Next make sure the disk is ok. If you can find (or have) another machine with a known good disk drive, try the disk in that.
If the disk is ok, clean the disk heads. They can get gummed up especially if degraded disks are used. One of those cleaning disks are good. Be careful though, if the drive is only single sided. You need to use a cleaning disk for single sided disks or at least put tape over the non-head side. You can also clean the heads with a cotton bud and isporopyl alcohol. Just make sure you don't knock them out of alignment.
If that doesn't work, try lubricating the rails that make the heads move up and down. A touch of very light oil or silicon grease is good for this. Move the head assembly back and forwards until it seems to move relatively freely without sticking.
I've had many a drive come back to life after the above.
However, If none of the above work, it's more serious. It's either the rotation speed is off, the heads need aligning or the electronics are shot. None are easy to fix without equipment.
Watch the disk drive flywheel rotate . Is it roating freely at a constant speed? If not does the belt look ok, or is it frayed and loose? Do you have any diagnostic software which checks a drive's speed? (only useful if you have another drive of course).
Novel ways can be found to align a drive without a specific alignment disk. Check my Jan 18th, 2009 Blog posting on the classic-computers.org.nz site.
Logi ICS can be checked with a logic probe.
Hope this helps.
Terry (Tez)