2 Oct
2024
2 Oct
'24
7:09 a.m.
What do people use to align a shugart drives?
The appropriate alignment diskette, an *analog* oscilloscope, and a program to step the
drive around and load heads. For most drives, that's a PC and ImageDisk, but we use a
DeRamp FDC+ and AFEXER for Pertec drives in MITS disk systems.
Seems we're one of the few places that will still do it for other people. I know of
two other hobbyists who can align their own drives, but neither will do it for other
people anymore, I think.
I plan to learn more about the Dysan tester gear
because this seems to be a popular repair
module.
Be *very* *careful* mounting an alignment diskette in a drive. If you frag it, there's
no getting it back. They can't be written using a regular drive. When repairing a
drive, I run it in whatever alignment it is, and read/write a lot of test data to make
sure it's not about to wreck my alignment diskette with an errant write. After it is
100% functional, then it gets aligned.
Thanks,
Jonathan