26 Jan
2018
26 Jan
'18
12:15 p.m.
I watched with great interest one of curiousmarc?s recent Alto videos, wherein they clean
a Diablo drive head ultrasonically. I?ve been struggling a bit with my restored RK05
drives to completely clean the heads after minor head crashes. Not being able to get them
really sparkling clean makes me always worried about running the drives for more than a
few minutes at a time, and a little nervous every time I spin them up?. Scrubbing and
scrubbing and scrubbing with IPA and kimwipes just doesn?t seem to get all the crud off.
I do have an alignment pack that I could use to re-align the heads after removing them for
a proper cleaning this way. Decent ultrasonic cleaners aren?t terribly expensive and
might be nice to have around the shop anyway (I could also do all my eyeglasses :-)
In the video, the heads are submerged in IPA in a glass cylinder, which is then placed in
the ultrasonic bath.
Has anybody on the list here done this and have tips/advice beyond what can be seen in the
video? It looked very effective! I?m also having a little trouble sourcing the squat
form glass graduated cylinder online.
cheers,
?FritzM.
26 Jan
26 Jan
12:45 p.m.
I always use my finger and finger nail. Your finger is very sensitive to even the tiniest
piece of crud. I then just need to do a final clean with IPA.
Dwight
________________________________
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Fritz Mueller via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2018 12:15:34 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: ultrasonic cleaning for disk heads
I watched with great interest one of curiousmarc?s recent Alto videos, wherein they clean
a Diablo drive head ultrasonically. I?ve been struggling a bit with my restored RK05
drives to completely clean the heads after minor head crashes. Not being able to get them
really sparkling clean makes me always worried about running the drives for more than a
few minutes at a time, and a little nervous every time I spin them up?. Scrubbing and
scrubbing and scrubbing with IPA and kimwipes just doesn?t seem to get all the crud off.
I do have an alignment pack that I could use to re-align the heads after removing them for
a proper cleaning this way. Decent ultrasonic cleaners aren?t terribly expensive and
might be nice to have around the shop anyway (I could also do all my eyeglasses :-)
In the video, the heads are submerged in IPA in a glass cylinder, which is then placed in
the ultrasonic bath.
Has anybody on the list here done this and have tips/advice beyond what can be seen in the
video? It looked very effective! I?m also having a little trouble sourcing the squat
form glass graduated cylinder online.
cheers,
?FritzM.
27 Jan
27 Jan
8:23 a.m.
The most versatile, effective cleaning tool /ever/. Not even sarcastic.
=]
--
Anders Nelson
+1 (517) 775-6129
www.erogear.com
On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 3:45 PM, dwight via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I always use my finger and finger nail. Your finger is
very sensitive to
even the tiniest piece of crud. I then just need to do a final clean with
IPA.
Dwight
________________________________
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Fritz Mueller
via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2018 12:15:34 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: ultrasonic cleaning for disk heads
I watched with great interest one of curiousmarc?s recent Alto videos,
wherein they clean a Diablo drive head ultrasonically. I?ve been
struggling a bit with my restored RK05 drives to completely clean the heads
after minor head crashes. Not being able to get them really sparkling
clean makes me always worried about running the drives for more than a few
minutes at a time, and a little nervous every time I spin them up?.
Scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing with IPA and kimwipes just doesn?t
seem to get all the crud off.
I do have an alignment pack that I could use to re-align the heads after
removing them for a proper cleaning this way. Decent ultrasonic cleaners
aren?t terribly expensive and might be nice to have around the shop anyway
(I could also do all my eyeglasses :-)
In the video, the heads are submerged in IPA in a glass cylinder, which is
then placed in the ultrasonic bath.
Has anybody on the list here done this and have tips/advice beyond what
can be seen in the video? It looked very effective! I?m also having a
little trouble sourcing the squat form glass graduated cylinder online.
cheers,
?FritzM.
11:02 a.m.
I thoroughly enjoyed Marc's video of the head cleaning.
Some dumb questions from a guy who has not yet experienced his first head crash on a
removable-pack hard drive:
When it happens, am I correct in assuming that the pack is toast, and should never be
loaded again?
My removable-pack drives are DEC RL02 drives and a Data General drive with one removable
and one fixed platter, using cartridges of the same style as the RL02. The DG drive has a
glass encoder, so I presume that it requires realignment after removing the heads for
cleaning. I might have acquired an alignment pack for it already. But since the RL02
drives use servo bursts on the media, do they require realignment after removing and
replacing the heads?
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
11:43 a.m.
Thanks for the tip on heating, Carl.
On Jan 27, 2018, at 11:02 AM, Mark J. Blair via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Some dumb questions from a guy who has not yet experienced his first head crash on a
removable-pack hard drive:
When it happens, am I correct in assuming that the pack is toast, and should never be
loaded again?
I?m fairly new to this as well, but from what I have seen so far, head crashes vary in
severity from mild bumps/scrapes to deep, brutal gouges. My experience with RK05 packs is
that media may be recovered after mild crashes with careful cleaning, though it takes a
good bit of patience and elbow grease to remove post-crash smudges of burnt oxide from the
disk surfaces and the heads. Anything with a deeper gouge will probably just crash again
straight away.
I received about a dozen packs with my RK05 drives. There is a lot of good advice in the
archives here and over on the vcfed DEC forum about opening/inspecting/cleaning packs, and
I don?t think I?d try to mount anything in my drives without opening it up and giving it
an inspection first. On RK05 packs this is easy; since they are a single platter you can
easily see and clean the entirety of both surfaces. I imagine on a multi-platter pack it
would be really difficult to inspect or clean without unstacking the platters, after which
I?d guess alignment and balancing would be problematic?
The dozen or so packs that I received with my drives many years ago had a lot of variation
in condition. Some had bad, hard crashes, others just had ?bumps and bruises?. The heads
of both drives as I received them had lots of oxide build up ? it doesn?t look as if the
previous users (scientists in a lab) had very good disk hygiene!
?FritzM.
1:47 p.m.
I too watched Marc's video with great interest, as I have a pair of Diablo 31's
identical to his.
Now, I'm a long long long way from getting them operational, but it's good to see
what has worked for
future reference.
As I'd never be able to find a similar alignment pack, the heads in mine would have to
stay put for
cleaning. Thus I'm wondering whether it would be possible to place the drive
vertically so the heads
point down, and use one of those el-cheapo miniature jewellery ultrasonic cleaners
plentiful on eBay
to dip the heads into the isopropyl alcohol, in situ?
The cleaner would I expect require some modification for it to fit around the heads and in
the tight
space, plus some mounting arrangement to keep it from falling into the drive.
Steve.
1:59 p.m.
Speaking of these drives, I have a single decpack cartridge which hitchhiked along with a
purchase of RL02 packs. It's marked "decpack 2200 BPI-12" and has 12 sector
notches in the hub. Does that mean that it was most likely used with an RK05 drive in a
PDP-11 system? I seem to recall that packs used with a PDP-8 system would have 16 sector
notches. I hope that I can procure a matching drive for it one of these days, even though
Marc's video makes me think I'd be royally screwed if I didn't also manage to
procure a good alignment pack to go with it, and maybe some spare heads. I don't have
any experience with the front-loading drives yet.
Labels on the pack indicate that it saw some DEC maintenance on 1/6/84, and it was used by
somebody named Fred Knight. It's labeled "KMC-LP Testing Pack". I know
it's a long shot, but it would be neat if any of that meant something to anybody on
the list.
I don't know anything about how to clean hard drive packs, and that's something
I'd like to learn about.
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
30 Jan
30 Jan
11:08 a.m.
On Jan 27, 2018, at 1:47 PM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
As I'd never be able to find a similar alignment pack, the heads in mine would have
to stay put for
cleaning. Thus I'm wondering whether it would be possible to place the drive
vertically so the heads
point down, and use one of those el-cheapo miniature jewellery ultrasonic cleaners
plentiful on eBay
to dip the heads into the isopropyl alcohol, in situ?
That's quite a clever idea! I would try it. Caveat is that I had a so-so experience
with the cheaper ultrasonic cleaners - they just didn't have the oomph, which is why I
finally invested in the big one with the heater. But it might work OK with enough time,
and it can't possibly hurt. It would make for a great video!
Marc
10:57 a.m.
On Jan 27, 2018, at 11:02 AM, Mark J. Blair via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
When it happens, am I correct in assuming that the pack is toast, and should never be
loaded again?
Carl would be better qualified to answer that one, but from what he has taught me and what
we've seen so far, it depends. If it's a mild crash and just burnished, it might
be OK. A lot of the PARC packs we read had such leftover marks from previous mild
encounters with a head... Some read just fine, most dirtied our heads but were OK at least
for archiving once, a few re-crashed. If there is a gouge and you can see the metal,
forget it.
Marc
2518
days inactive
2522
days old
8 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
anders.k.nelson＠gmail.com -
curiousmarc3＠gmail.com -
dkelvey＠hotmail.com -
fritzm＠fritzm.org -
nf6x＠nf6x.net -
steven＠malikoff.com