16 Nov
2006
16 Nov
'06
2:52 a.m.
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Josh Dersch wrote:
It still spins up, but it never seems to get to a
"ready" condition. Or at
least, that's how it _sounds_ -- it spins up, then sounds like it starts to
spin down a tiny bit, then spins up again in rapid succession. It will do
this for as long as I leave it running, with no head activity at all.
I have two Micropolis 1335 with the same problem. I've found out that the
drive gets ready when you do the following:
- With power off, remove the small two conductor film cable from the
control board to the drive (this is the head actuator power cable)
- Power up the drive and wait until it has reached its speed
- Plug in the cable et voil?, the drive makes "pling" and is ready
This made me build a little dirty hack to the drive. I've put a small
relais (or what you call solenoid) between the logic board and the
actuator cable that gets energized after a delay of several seconds
(enough time to let the drive spin up). This is the automated version of
plugging the cable out and in... The drive works fine since then.
BTW when my drives started with this problem, they ran fine as long as
they were powered up. But as soon as I powererd them down they wouldn't
start normally, I always had to wait at least two weaks, then they would
start again. If I tried after one week, it didn't work.
Christian
PS:
I'm happy for each MFM drive I can get, even defective ones. They're
getting very rare now.