17 Jun
2005
17 Jun
'05
5:48 p.m.
Hi folks,
today I have powered up my Ampex DFR 996 removable/fixed combined disk
Argh! Powering up a devive (any device, but demountable hard disks are
one of the worst) is the last thing you should do. And in the case of
such a drive, I'd run the motors for at least 10 miuntes with the heads
prevented from loading (e.g. with the voice coil disconnected from the
servo amplifer) to 'purge' the air ducts, etc.
drive. After tweaking a bit around the address plug
(btw does anybody
have an original one?) I got it to start. It said to be ready only once.
And made a horrible sound with the head of the removable disk. After
that I tried it again but the drive just inserts the head for a short
moment (with the same noise) and retracts immediately, shutting down.
Presumably you have a head crash. And the drive can't find the servo
information, so it retracts the heads.
Are there any opinions, spares, help, TOOLS for my
situation? I have no
clue if I could be able to find a new pair of heads and install them?
Who has experience? What about the head alignment procedure?
I've never seen this drive, but I have done head replacements on
demountable hard disks. It's not too difficult (not much worse than doing
a floppy drive). Of course you need the new heads.
YEs, there's an alignment procedure. You generally have a special disk
pack that you put n, then connect a 'scope to the outputs of the read
preamplifier, and adjust the head position for even lobes of the catseye
pattern. Just like a floppy drive in fact. Again the problem is getting
the alignment pack.
If you put good heads in, and they fly, you should be able to
format/read/write a scratch disk, even before you do the alignment. I'd
not put an alignment pack anywhere near a drive that didn't do that.
-tony