11 Feb
2008
11 Feb
'08
1:52 p.m.
I have a Newbury NDR 1105 drive I'm keen to
rescue. On its last use the drive spun up normally
but after a few minutes there was an impresive
flash and smoke.
On inspection the only thing that seems to have
burned out is a surface mount capacitor - although
quite a large one (10u).
LArge capacitors on hard drives are often nothing more than supply
decouplers. Is this one physically near the power connector? Can you
trace the connections -- is it directly connected from one of the supply
lines to ground?
In any case, tanatlum capacitors have this habit of going short-circuit
with age, and if they're connected to a low-impedance power source (like
directly across a supply line), they then explode in a spectacular
manner. Normally replacing them gets the machine going again with no
other problems.
The contents of the disk are quite valuable in that
they hold a late copy of the 'colour card' edition
of 42nix, a Whitechapel Workstation OS. I'd like
to archive that if possible.
Any tips for rescue? I've managed to remove the burnt
out capacitor and can replace it. There appears to be
no other damage on the board apart from some scorching
to the PCB.
Provided there are no daamged traces on the PCB you should ahve no problems.
-tony