RL02 Question

allison allisonportable at gmail.com
Tue Mar 27 15:54:22 CDT 2018


On 03/27/2018 03:22 PM, Aaron Jackson wrote:
>>>>> So, from what I can see, the drive should spin up correctly, but for
>>>>> some reason it goes into fault mode. I am right in thinking that upon
>>>>> load, the heads should continue moving forward until the first track is
>>>>> found, right? I should not have to perform a seek manually from the PDP?
>>>>> If this is not the case, perhaps there is something else wrong.
>>>> I’m not an RL02 hardware expert at all, just a daily user back in the
>>>> day. I’m reading this assuming that at all times the drive is
>>>> correctly hooked up to an RLV12 in a running PDP with the correct
>>>> cable and termination present on the drive? If it isn’t you’ll get a
>>>> fault condition instead of ready after spin up.
>>>>
>>>> A
>>> No worries, your input has been valuable, so thank you.
>>>
>>> For anyone else who might have an idea:
>> ON fault the heads are retracted and will not load till cleared.
>> Least mine behaves that way.
>>
>> Most common problems are wrong drive address, cable issues, no terminator.
>> Others include head lock not removed or the auto unlock style of
>> headlock has
>> the tab broken.
>>
>>> It seems to be hooked up correctly. When it is in the weird flashing
>>> ready state, the boot loader says "Read error" or "Device error"
>>> randomly. The heads oscillate back and forth very slightly as if it is
>>> trying to align itself better on the first track, which doesn't exist
>>> because it hasn't moved far enough into the pack.
>> IF in fault its resetting to retracted on every try.
>> If not something else is wrong.
>>
>>> I'm beginning to think the heads are bad which will be far too expensive
>>> so I may end up giving up.
>> Heads are not that expensive... However you could have a wrong pack
>> or one that has been erased and has no servo tracks. You must start with
>> a known good pack and cleaned heads.
>>
>>
>> Allison
> Well, I replaced the DOWN head and adjusted the amplitude on the r/w
> board. The drive now stays in READY without the FAULT lamp coming on, so
> this is promising. The heads load onto the first track.
>
> Without any r/w operations, should the READY light flash? Mine is
> flashing a little but not too rapidly. I am guessing this is while it
> tries to keep the heads positioned over the track.
Yes, normal read/write/seek activity causes that.

> When I try to boot using the MXV11-BF boot roms, it says:
>
MXV-11 boot is not very chatty or informative.

> ]] ?BOOTROM-F- DL 0 read error
>
> The alignment between the two heads looks okay also.
>
> Any ideas, anyone?

Is the OS on it?  IF RT-11 is it configured to boot from DL-nn?
IF you have OS on floppy can your do a dir of the devices it knows of?


Allison
> Thanks,
> Aaron.
>



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