RL02 Spinup fails

[Aaron Jackson]

Hi everyone,

I have managed to hook up an RL02 drive to my PDP-11 (thanks to Dave
Wade for the drives) . This took me longer than I thought it would - I
tried with a flat ribbon cable with a DIY terminator going straight into
board , but couldn't get it to work. Removed the terminator, and the
fault light turned off. So that's positive.

I tried to load a cartridge, which I had cleaned, inspected and
generally appears to be in good condition. It started to spin up and I
could hear it getting faster, but after 30-40 seconds the fault light
returns. I made a short video demonstrating this:

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=japwBBodO8U

According to the manual the fault light can appear for the following
reasons:

- Drive select error... Surely this would come on at the start?
- Seek time out error... I'd have to hear the heads move first
- Write current in heads during sector time error... Same as above
- Loss of system clock... The fault light would be on from the start.
- Write protect error... I don't think it got that far
- Write data error... Same as above
- Spin error... Is this the only remaining fault?

So could the only cause be a spin error? I am wondering if the belt is
slipping or something like that?

Can anyone offer some advice?

Thanks,

Aaron.