MCCABE@MTUS5.BITNET (10/31/88)
Date: 30 October 88, 13:49:14 EST
From: Jim McCabe MCCABE at MTUS5
To: INFO-ATARI16 at SCORE.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: Dead disk drive (sigh)
Just a few minutes ago my only floppy drive died, or so it seems.
For the two years that I've owned it, every so often it would fail
to "grab" onto the disk properly. (Meaning that it would spin the
disk for a few seconds, and THEN make the characteristic sucking
sound that normally occurrs instantly.) I have always assumed that
it was the individual disk's fault, but now it seems like it's been
the drive's fault all along.
Today, I booted up with Flash, and then tried to access the disk
so I could read in a macro file. I had put in the wrong disk
by accident, so I put my Flash disk back in after it responded with
a "file not found" message. The next time I tried it, the drive
started to spin, and it never made that familiar sucking sound
that usually happens when everything goes okay. Instead, the
spinning just sort of winded down and got slower, and the drive
kept trying to read the disk (with no success).
After trying to reboot, with different disks, my drive still just
makes that spinning sound, the light never goes off, and the
ST says that the drive is not responding.
Since the drive is two years old, I wasn't worried about voiding
my warranty and I opened it up. No luck -- the drive parts are
very hard to see, and I didn't want to break anything by tugging
obstacles out of the way.
So, now the cover is back on, the drive is dead, and I'm hoping someone
out there has had some experience with this before. I'm assuming
that this is being caused by the drive itself, and not the ST's
controller circuitry, but maybe it's only wishful thinking.
Since I live in Houghton, Michigan, there's nowhere local that I
could take the drive for repair. Is there somewhere I could send
the drive and have it fixed within a month? Is there some kind of
deal like the motherboard-swap done at Atari for disk drives?
Jimrich@lakesys.UUCP (Rich Dankert) (11/01/88)
In article <8810302242.AA01330@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> MCCABE@MTUS5.BITNET writes: > >So, now the cover is back on, the drive is dead, and I'm hoping someone >out there has had some experience with this before. I'm assuming >that this is being caused by the drive itself, and not the ST's >controller circuitry, but maybe it's only wishful thinking. > >Since I live in Houghton, Michigan, there's nowhere local that I >could take the drive for repair. Is there somewhere I could send >the drive and have it fixed within a month? Is there some kind of >deal like the motherboard-swap done at Atari for disk drives? > > > > Jim Jim; `If this is a Double Sided drive, try turning the drive Upside down. Yup, thats right. Sounds like a few drives that I looked at,that had the same symptons, and while working on the drivem I turned the Mech upside down, and it worked fine. Place it back rightside up, and bang, same problem. Seems that the problem is that the Direct drive motor either has shorted windings, or a controllinf chip of the PCB that it's mounted to has problems. In any case, I have both the drives sent into Atari, and had replacements back in Two weeks! Never really looked into the drive too far to get the exact cause as the owners were in a hurry to get the drive back and working, and seeing that I don't have a full parts inventory, it was done this way. No One regretted this. I believe that the cost was in the $80~90 range. Who knows, one day I might get another to work with a little longer and decipher what is the exact cause. rich..... UUCP:{ihnp4~uunet~marque~uwvax}!uwmcsd1!lakesys!rich -- Disclaimer: The words, expressions posted here are my own..... Nothing is ever so bad that it can't be made worse by trying to fix it -- Law of the Hacker