RX02 Problem solved...

Tony and others - The head load pad looks visually fine. The head load spring tension appears pretty normal , and the solenoid pulls in nicely. The drive consistently reads the first 10 or so tracks, then tosses various number of errors as it goes further out. I've cleaned the head, and cleaned/lubed the spindle. The track 0 sensor appears fine. It is indeed possible that the alignment is off - that would probably explain the poor performance as it steps out. I guess a worn out head would have the same symptoms. I the 70's I had a neat Dysan digital alignment disk that I used to realign a few SA901 and SA801 drives. Unfortunately I no longer have it. I suppose I could mark the position of the stepper and slightly rotate it in each direction to see if it improves things. If someone can point me to an actual alignment procedure I'm game - I have reasonable scopes etc here. I'm not anxious to replace the entire drive, but I would love to get this up and running! Any help/suggestions greatly appreciated. - Gary Other faults that I've had were a mis-aligned track 0 sensor (causing it to step out beyond the outermost formatted track on the disk), and a low-tension head load pad spring. In the latter case, taking the thing a aper and bending the torsion spring by hand got it going again. The only problem was reassembling it, I found it necessary to make a dummy pin to hold the spring inside the load arm that was then pushed out when the real pin was inserted through the head mouting. In any case, before replacing something as large as a drive unit, I'd want to know which of the various parts was the problem. Do you know, for example, that the head load solenoid works and pulls in correctly? That you can get a signal from the track 0 sensor? That the spindle is turning? and so on... -tony