RL02 Question

[allison]

On 03/26/2018 04:08 PM, Aaron Jackson via cctalk wrote:
>>> So, from what I can see, the drive should spin up correctly, but for
>>> some reason it goes into fault mode. I am right in thinking that upon
>>> load, the heads should continue moving forward until the first track is
>>> found, right? I should not have to perform a seek manually from the PDP?
>>> If this is not the case, perhaps there is something else wrong.
>> I’m not an RL02 hardware expert at all, just a daily user back in the
>> day. I’m reading this assuming that at all times the drive is
>> correctly hooked up to an RLV12 in a running PDP with the correct
>> cable and termination present on the drive? If it isn’t you’ll get a
>> fault condition instead of ready after spin up.
>>
>> A
> No worries, your input has been valuable, so thank you.
>
> For anyone else who might have an idea:
ON fault the heads are retracted and will not load till cleared.
Least mine behaves that way.

Most common problems are wrong drive address, cable issues, no terminator.
Others include head lock not removed or the auto unlock style of
headlock has
the tab broken.

> It seems to be hooked up correctly. When it is in the weird flashing
> ready state, the boot loader says "Read error" or "Device error"
> randomly. The heads oscillate back and forth very slightly as if it is
> trying to align itself better on the first track, which doesn't exist
> because it hasn't moved far enough into the pack.
IF in fault its resetting to retracted on every try.
If not something else is wrong.

> I'm beginning to think the heads are bad which will be far too expensive
> so I may end up giving up.

Heads are not that expensive...  However you could have a wrong pack
or one that has been erased and has no servo tracks.   You must start with
a known good pack and cleaned heads.


Allison