17 Jun
1999
17 Jun
'99
3:18 p.m.
At 09:21 PM 6/17/99 -0500, you wrote:
Ugggg....
In my rush to spin up the drive, I had neglected to inspect the bottom heads
for the fixed platter. They are, after all, almost hidden in the bottom. :[
Sigh... Been there... Done that!
This time I removed the bottom of the drive and looked
underneath...
...The bottom heads which can only really be inspected from the bottom
of the drive with the bottom cover off) don't look to be very happy.
Definite oxide residue, but the heads at least LOOK structurally sound.
Well, that's half the battle. From your description, this drive sounds
similar to the CDC 'Hawk' (5MB fixed and 5MB removeable) drives I worked on
for a long time. On the 'Hawk' at least, if the head ceramic was intact,
the mounts were not bent, and you cleaned them well, the heads were
amazingly rugged. I replaced many more fixed platters than I did heads.
Since the bottom fixed platter doesn't have servo
data on it, I'm hoping a
new bottom platter won't cost much more than a removable platter. Then I'm
hoping that since the noise was never that pronounced that perhaps the heads
will be OK after thorough cleaning. Don't know much about this - is that
possible? I know, I'm probably hoping unrealistically.
Or as we often did, take an unusable cartridge (usually due to shell
damage), pull the platter and mount it as the fixed.
This pretty well trashes my hopes for TSB, at least
until I can fix it or
find another 7900A. On the bright side, it's pretty obvious that this damage
was done before I got the drive. Small consolation ;)
Dang... Sorry to hear...
-jim
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jimw(a)computergarage.org
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