11 Feb
2009
11 Feb
'09
11:59 a.m.
On Tue, 10 Feb 2009, Tony Duell wrote:
Sure. But I am much more interested in the traditional analogue alignment
disks.
I am curious as to what the 'real'
alignment signals look like. One
reference seemed to impley they were circular tracks not concentric with
the spidnle. Making those would be 'fun'...
The radial alignment tracks on the Dysan digital (according to what
Dysan said when they released it) ARE concentric, but with
individual sectors being out of spec on radius.
For non-concentric circular, couldn't you modify the disk clamping
mechanism to be slightly off of the spindle axis?
The disk clamp isn't the problem, it generally 'floats' in an oversized
hole anyway. You;'d need to make a replacement spindle with the necessary
offset. Not too hard, but not tribial. The problem comes if you want 2
offset tracks say 180 drgrees out of phase (so one is at its innerpost
point when the other is at the outermost point). Aligning the media to
the offset hub accurately to do that would be 'interesting'.
Or, use a
PC. Trivial software to convert a PC into a drive exercisor.
Sure, ut a lot more
bulky (which is an issue when I've got most of a
classic ocmputer all over my workbench!).