OK I got this far... Some weird blinking cursor on power on, then a 1701 error, and it hits the floppy disk. Aha, its already got a Hardcard inside! I open it up, and I feel no mechanical motion or hear any sound, the drive does feel warm, so darn it, its locked up. And the connector is proprietary, takes the flex straight to the drive. I see electronics that look like a data separator, some tweakable caps, so the HardcardPlus boards are not even MFM type interfaces. Next problem, this is the keytronics capacitive keyboard, and it has the foam rot problem, I have some dead keys. I read you can use double sided foam tape, stick the Mylar circles on it and fix these keyboards. Ill try that next... as if my time is worth nothing. Hey we are hobby computerists. Randy

I did better than that, took its cover off. Gave those platters a spin. Formatted just fine too. Lets see how long it lasts. Randy

IIRC, 1701 is a hard disk problem. I assume the drive spindle is not accesible outside the HDA. If it is, try giving it a tweak (but don;t blame me if it rips the heads off ;-)) Where is this data separator (on which end of the interface cable? With an ST412 MFM set-up, I'd expect the data separator to be on the controller board. The drive really is dumb... I've seen those 'contacts' on E-bay.... If it's just the foam, then yes you can mend them with bfoam tape. But I've seen one Keytronics keyboard where the foam was fine but the metalisation had disapperaed. I have no idea how that happeend... -tony

On Fri, 8 Oct 2010 14:16:28 -0700 (PDT), Fred Cisin wrote: Hold the card in your hand so that a twisting motion of your wrist is in line with center of the platter. So that a sharp twist of your wrist and sudden stop will causes the platter to try continue spinning and break free. Sometimes it is head stiction and some times it is thickening bearing grease. Warming the drive to about 90f has helped the grease problem, but do not cook it! back under my rock :) Bob

Hi Mike, These guys probably don't update or even pay attention to their web page; I'm not surprised the other machine is not listed. Its a walk-in retail store. Mike Carter is the head honcho, you can email him from the site links if you want it, or I can go get it for you. My adoration for this machine comes from its origin - I knew Rod Canion and sold him and 'Gateway Technologies' a Data I/O Model 29 EPROM programmer. I was the Data I/O rep in Houston at the time, when they were leaving TI and forming Compaq. No doubts they used it to read the IBM PC ROMS and write their own BIOS. Everybody is aware of the cleanroom story, the guys who read the ROM were not permitted to write the compatable BIOS, but only write the specification for it, to pass on to other S/W engineers. Another story I recall is that some IBM applications were dependent on a search for the the text string "Copyright IBM" in the ROM, so Compaq had "None of this code is copyright IBM" in their ROM. Spoofing the applications.... Today I am cutting out little circles of the key capacitive plates, and double sided tape backing. Hope to get the keyboard foam rot problem fixed on this machine. Randy