11 May
1998
11 May
'98
4:45 p.m.
On Mon, 11 May 1998, Grant Zozman wrote:
I recently added a Kaypro 10 to my collection, but it
seems to have met with some rough handling
in shipping. If anyone can shed some light on the problem described below, I would
REALLY
appreciate it (any Kaypro experts out there?)
When I first fired it up, it booted from the hard drive right away. However, as soon as
I tried
to access the HD further, all I got were "Bad Sector" errors. Since then, the
computer will no
longer boot from the HD, and I can't access any information on it ( not a good sign
:-( ).
Using CP/M, I have tried to re-format the drive with no luck; all I get
are "Verify Errors" as it
tries to format. So much for the theory that the heads may have gotten
knocked slightly out of
alignment!
Do you have the PUTSYS and PUTOVL programs on floppy? These are the hard
disk equivalent of SYSGEN, and are needed after format to make the drive
bootable.
Re-seating all connectors on the drive and controller
didn't help either.
I have pulled the drive from the computer and hooked it up outside the case. It does
spin up to
normal operating speed, and I can see the head stepper motor responding in a normal
fashion when I
attempt to access the drive (formatting, parking the heads, pulling a directory, etc.).
None of
the linkage to the heads seems damaged or broken; in fact the entire computer is in
excellent
shape and has not been abused. The hard drive activity light (which is controlled from
the drive
itself) also seems to respond normally.
No untoward noises seem to come from the unit when it is operating, although I do hear
some
metallic "singing" during the last second or so just prior to the drive coming
to a complete stop
on power down. I'm not sure if this is just the brake mechanism, or if it is the
heads against
the platters (I do park the drive prior to powering off, though).
Based on the above, I am assuming (wrongly so?) that the controller is probably working
OK. It is
a Western Digital WD1002-HDO. My hunch is that either the drive electronics or the drive
itself
have failed.
Are there any other tests I should by trying? Am I correct to assume that it is the
drive which
has failed?
The drive is a Tandon TM502 (10MB, MFM, 5 1/4" platters). If the drive cannot be
salvaged, I
would appreciate hearing from anyone who has a replacement drive, or knows of a source
for same.
I would like to keep the same make and model drive if possible, but an equivalent model
would be
fine too (as I'm sure Non Linear Systems used more than one make of drive in the
Kaypro's).
That is most likely a replacement drive, as the originals were one of
Microscience, Seagate, or Shugart. You can replace it with any MFM hard
drive that has at least 4 heads and 306 cylinders. An ST-225 or clone
comes to mind. Of course, with the Kaypro ROM you will only be able to
access 4 heads and 306 cylinders, but it opens up the available list of
drives rather wider. With the Advent TurboRom, available from TCJ, you
can make use of a wide variety of drives on up to 40mb, as I recall.
- don
Any help is much appreciated!
Grant Zozman
gzozman(a)escape.ca
donm(a)cts.com
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