3 Jul
2007
3 Jul
'07
12:44 p.m.
On 3 Jul 2007 at 11:00, Ade wrote:
I recently picked up an old Act Sirius 1 machine
(I've been looking for one for
years), which has a Tandon TM 502 harddisk in it. Unfortunately, the HDD
doesn't seem to work :(
It spins up, by the sounds of it, but is not talking to the computer. There's
no head noises of any description.>
Fortunately, the old drives use pretty ordinary componentry, so
troubleshooting and repair of the electronics board is pretty easy,
but if the HDA itself has problems, you have a tough job ahead of
you.
In my experience, the TM502 was an unreliable drive. One of the
local parts dealers was using them as doorstops. When I asked about
them, he said that he'd sell me his entire stock for $5. No--not $5
apiece, but $5 for the entire lot--but I had to take the entire lot.
These were supposedly working pulls.
I came home with about 20 of the things and was so underwhelmed by
the reliability of the ones I managed to get working that I scrapped
the entire bunch. Life's too short and I felt that I was cheated out
of $5.
There are better 10MB MFM drives if you can find them. There's
nothing magic, IIRC, about the TM502. I still have old Rodimes and
CMIs and Seagates, but no Tandons.
Cheers,
Chuck