>> So,
from what I can see, the drive should spin up correctly, but for
>> some reason it goes into fault mode. I am right in thinking that upon
>> load, the heads should continue moving forward until the first track is
>> found, right? I should not have to perform a seek manually from the PDP?
>> If this is not the case, perhaps there is something else wrong.
> I?m not an RL02 hardware expert at all, just a daily user back in the
> day. I?m reading this assuming that at all times the drive is
> correctly hooked up to an RLV12 in a running PDP with the correct
> cable and termination present on the drive? If it isn?t you?ll get a
> fault condition instead of ready after spin up.
>
> A
No worries, your input has been valuable, so thank you.
For anyone else who might have an idea:
ON fault the heads are retracted and will
not load till cleared.
Least mine behaves that way.
Most common problems are wrong drive address, cable issues, no terminator.
Others include head lock not removed or the auto unlock style of
headlock has
the tab broken.
It seems to be hooked up correctly. When it is in
the weird flashing
ready state, the boot loader says "Read error" or "Device error"
randomly. The heads oscillate back and forth very slightly as if it is
trying to align itself better on the first track, which doesn't exist
because it hasn't moved far enough into the pack.
IF in fault its resetting to
retracted on every try.
If not something else is wrong.
I'm beginning to think the heads are bad
which will be far too expensive
so I may end up giving up.
Heads are not that expensive... However you could have
a wrong pack
or one that has been erased and has no servo tracks. You must start with
a known good pack and cleaned heads.
Allison
Well, I replaced the DOWN head and adjusted the amplitude on the r/w
board. The drive now stays in READY without the FAULT lamp coming on, so
this is promising. The heads load onto the first track.
Without any r/w operations, should the READY light flash? Mine is
flashing a little but not too rapidly. I am guessing this is while it
tries to keep the heads positioned over the track.