ICL PERQ 2 T2 Micropolis 1303 spinning down.

Yep, and I'm sure a lot of drives from this era have the same issue. Or the grease in the bearings has separated out. Stuff like that. In the inside of the HDA the oil is probably still there, just needs to re-mix with the clay and binders that make grease grease. On the outside bearings the oil has probably been evaporated and needs to be replaced (new oil will mix with grease and work). On a high performance Porsche, the exact type of grease for a wheel bearing is critical and mixing of grease and oil is bad because it's 400+hp behind all that. A hard drive is probably a lot more forgiving but too much oil could wash out the clay which means the oil won't stick in the bearing. The big problem is torque: Original coil type head assemblies had a LOT of torque. Modern motors and the like have a lot less starting torque because it's not normally needed. But on an old disk you don't have enough torque to overcome the sticky pad or to mix the grease/oil and it's stuck. One thing I have been concerned about is if the heads have stuck to the platter. If that happens, then turning the spindle will probably rip the heads off. Not sure how to address this. CZ