26 Jun
2014
26 Jun
'14
3:44 p.m.
On Jun 26, 2014, at 13:36 , Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:
I second that! You *really* don't want to risk
overwriting a servo burst,
as there's no way for mere mortals to fix that. It's not even clear
whether *anyone* has the ability to fix that any more; even back in the day
the "solution" was generally to throw the pack away and buy a new one. So
even if the drive electronics has some protection against that, I'd
recommend ensuring that your design has protection against it as well.
I've been curious about whether it would be possible to rewrite servo bursts on an
RL02 pack with a modified RL02 drive using ordinary RL02 heads. I think it would be
straightforward (though not easy) to modify the drive mechanics and replace the
electronics in order to position the head properly and write the servo bursts. The
outstanding question in my mind is whether special heads with a different (probably wider)
track width would be necessary, and that would be the part that I wouldn't know how to
fabricate.
I wonder if it would be possible to make the servo bursts and regular data tracks on an
old RL02 platter visible with magnetic developer fluid in order to measure the feature
widths under an ordinary microscope?
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/