I've discovered that three of my four RA8x drives (one 82 and two 81s) now
refuse to spin up. All the failing drives give "SPIN ERROR" as the reason
and I've discovered, by an combination of educated guessing and parts
swapping with the working drive, that all three have bad optical sensors for
the tachometer disk.
Surfing around I see that this is a known problem. Apparently the
compound that was originally used to pot these sensors turns opaque over
time and, being as they're optical sensors, that really reduces their
effectiveness. I've seen some reports of people trying to repair the
sensors by either sanding off a layer of the epoxy potting compound, or even
trying to dissolve it somehow, but that seems to be a little bit hit or
miss.
Doesn't seem like these should be hard to replace though. They're just an
infrared LED and a phototransistor in a cute plastic case, and that
technology is still pretty common today.
Has anybody found a replacement for them? Does anybody have any
suggestions?
Thanks,
Bob