7 Mar
2011
7 Mar
'11
1:31 p.m.
On Sunday (03/06/2011 at 06:06PM +0000), Tony Duell wrote:
> >
> > I recently picked up a RL02 pack from a recycler. After doing my usual
> > tear-down and clean process, I tested the pack on my 11/34C. It was 100%
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> What do you do? I know the stanadard procedure for RK05 packs, but what
> do you dismantle, and how do you clean, the RL's?
Actually, I was asking about cleaning the RL _packs_, but doing the
drives is an interesting subject too.
What a great topic... as I have been doing this exact effort for the
past several weeks. I have completely cleaned and brought back online
two RL02 and a third is just entering the process.
Before I ever try to spin one up, I take the front panel off and remove
the black pre-filter. It is guaranteed to be disintegrating and turning
into a fine black powder. Exactly the kind of thing you don't want
sucked into the drive.
Ineeed. That crumbing foam is a problem in a lot of old elecrtronics. The
RL is better than some, the pre-filter is at the front end of those 'heat
exchanger' tubes, so the decaying foam isn't plaseted straight onto the
absolute filters as it is in an RK05 or RK07. It still helps to remvoe it
I vacuum out entire front area behind the front panel and the backside
of the panel itself.
I then take off the top covers and vacuum out the well where the pack
sits and wipe the entire area down with a damp cloth. Clean out ALL
I think I would use prapn-2-ol to dampen the cloth for this.
the junk... cob webs, hairs, there will surely be a
lot of junk in there.
Then I clean out the rear near the fan. The fan blades will be loaded
up with dust and I take off the grill and wipe those down with a Swiffer
duster cloth as well as vacuum the whole fan assembly.
Most of the time when I'm restorign soemthing, not just RLs, I remvoe the
fan unit completely . Most of the time these fans can be taken apart
(fixings are often under the lable), there are many varients which I
won';t go into here (but will if somebody asks me), but basically you get
to the end of th espidnel, remvoe a circlip and washers, and slide the
rotor out. The housing and blades are then a lot easier to clean. and
you can put a drop of oil on the bearings.
Then there is the issue of the "absolute filter" which is the roughly
3" x 9" HEPA-like filter accessible from the front. I was fortunate
to have one of these that was nearly new but others have been polluted
by the disintegrating black foam pre-filter. I am currently looking at
one that is completely black on the intake side-- totally loaded up with
the black carbon-like dust that the pre-filter turns into. Not cool.
I was just about to post to the list asking if there is a source for these
absolute filters still (which I doubt) or if anyone has a process for
I am tols that a farily common car air filter element can be modified to
fit. I do know that some older drives (RK01s?) used a car air filter
element as standard...
Anyway, the problem is that I can't rememebr which car is the one to ask
for. And at least over here, you go and buy a filter for a particular
car, the shops look at oyu like you're from amrs if you ask for one of
particular dimensions.
Anyone got any ideas?
[...]
At this point, I am brave enough to try to spin the
drive up. I will
take a known good not not precious pack and put it in the drive. You
of course have to have a controller connected to the drive and powered
on so that the drive gets clock over the interface. At this point you
should have the fault light out and the load light lit. You can press
load and hear the drive spin up. Hopefully. I have one drive that will
spin up, attempt to load the heads and then immediately fault. After
several experiments trying to get this drive to load the heads so that I
could do some of the alignment procedures, I found that it was actually
crashing the head into the media and I wrecked that pack. That drive is
Do you mean it was headcrashing in the normal sense (wich would indicate
possibly faulty heads) or that the head was hitting the edge of the disk,
or what?
[...]
-tony