Drive Cleanup Time

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Drive Cleanup Time

Postby SpidersWeb on Sat May 03, 2014 6:07 pm

So over time I've gathered quite a few spare drives - and I can't remember which ones work and which don't.

Image

There is four more drives not shown, but one I think has a damaged dead, another needs alignment (Tandon TM100), another needs a new latch (Tandon TM100), and the other is stuck in a drive mount tray and I haven't got around to unscrewing it yet.

I need a pair of 360's for an 8088 clone but the rest are spares. The YE Data 360 might go nicely in my IBM AT though.

Going through them one by one tonight, cleaning with isopropyl, testing and sorting. Thought I'd share how I get on.
Was going to do this ages ago, but it took Post Haste a month to get the isopropyl here. Apparently someone at the depot translated "leave at front doorstep" on my permission-to-leave form in to "knock on front door" - so it rode around with the courier for 3 weeks.
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Re: Drive Cleanup Time

Postby SpidersWeb on Sun May 04, 2014 2:41 pm

Good list so far:
2 x Panasonic JU-475-5AKO 1.2M white
1 x Panasonic JU-475-4AKO 1.2M white
3 x Mitsubishi MF501A-312U 360KB black
Chinon FZ-502B 360KB white (from Commodore PC10-III)
Olivetti 52784 360KB black
YE-Data 580B 360KB white (often used in the IBM AT as a secondary drive)

Each has had the heads cleaned, been able to read media written by another drive, and being able to write to and read from both heads reliably.

Bad so far:
Panasonic JU-475-4AKO 1.2M white - lubricant on "seek spiral" has dried up, poor thing can't move the motor (I barely can)
Teac 1.2Mb - it had twigs in it - I've removed them but the drive has issues - possibly around the track 0 sensor.

Few other models I haven't written down failed too - often on just being not able to read media on both heads reliably, but one was interesting - it works fine as a read only drive but if you ask it to write content - it corrupts the disk (on that track). I've also got a Copal drive which used to work fine, but stopped being reliable a while back, now in testing I can see Head 1 isn't working correctly.
Wanted - Dead or Alive - Reward $$$: Compaq Deskpro 8088 / 286 / 386 - IBM RT 6150/6151 parts - AT&T 3B2 parts
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Re: Drive Cleanup Time

Postby tezza on Sun May 04, 2014 5:11 pm

Interesting. It's good to give drives an overall check now and again.
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Re: Drive Cleanup Time

Postby SpidersWeb on Mon May 05, 2014 4:55 pm

haha, after I posted I thought 'this is probably one of those things I find awesome but isn't remotely interesting' but oh well!

Got some repairs to do. I've got a TM-100 that thinks track 0 is track 4, so that's on the to do list - quite fond of that one because it's a double sided drive with a 1982 date stamp (IBM didn't fit them until 1983). Then the jammed Panasonic, the clicking Teac, the lazy Shugart, and a few others where the top head wont read or write.

Quite happy with the good pile though - it's enough that I can fill my semi-finished 8088 builds and still wont actually need to hunt around for a tested 360K drive anymore. Very happy with the Mitsubishi's - two of them I never expected to see working again because of USPS - but they came right after a few cleans.

Edit: No luck with the 4th Panasonic - disassembled and lubricated but something is wrong with the little clip that hangs on to the spiral, way too hard for it to rotate when it's connected. Keeping it as a spare. Also found another Teac which works perfectly - this one turned out to be 360KB - so I might swap it for the faulty one in my IPC AT and try to repair that one separately. I need to open that machine anyway because it wont recognise the RLL controller any more - might just need reseating.
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