Wanted: tech docs on original Iomega 8-inch full height 10MB Bernoulli drive (Alpha-10)

[Michael Brutman]

Hi Eric,

I have working 10MB and 20MB units here being driven by a PC XT with the
Iomega specific card for them.

I've had to puts lots of effort into cleaning the heads on them.  I'm not
sure if there is an oxide shedding problem or just 30 years of dust that
I'm fighting, but they do seem to be very finicky at this stage.  It also
could be a media formatting problem; I think they have servo tracks that
were laid down at manufacturing time, so if you have a read error on the
servo track there is no way to fix it.


Mike


On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 9:34 AM Eric Smith via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

> Does anyone have the user, technical and/or service manual for the original
> 10MB Iomega Bernoulli drives? Bitsavers has the manuals for the later
> half-height 10.0/10.5 MB "Alpha-10H", but I'm looking for docs for the
> original model, which was full-height with a SASI (pre-SCSI) interface.
>
> I have the drives, about 20 cartridges that I want to image, and some
> additional scratch cartridges.
>
> I've never used Bernoulli drives before. These drives and cartridges were
> last used around 1986. I'll disconnect and test the power supply before
> powering up the actual drives, but is there anything else I should be
> concerned with?
>
> Does anyone have known-working 8-inch Bernoulli drives?
>