Hardest to Find Classic Computers

From: Cameron Kaiser <spectre_at_stockholm.ptloma.edu>
Date: Sun Dec 16 15:43:02 2001

> Now, when I bring it back out - for someone w/o a whole lot of experience
> with working on disk drives - what's a good approach for getting it back
> up to snuff. (I currently have no o-scope or other 'fancy' test gear, so
> I'm looking for the basics here...)

If you mean failure to get the disk drive to read disks initially, 1571s
sometimes like to have the disk 'tapped in' once or twice, i.e., insert the
disk, close the door and then tap the disk in a couple times. Occasionally
the 1571 fails to note the change of disk. I now have a habit of this with
my 128D.

Also, they are known to have grounding issues from time to time, so make
sure that the unit is properly earthed or you'll get weird disk errors.

Failing that, for alignment, look for a used *original* of Vorpal Toolkit
by Epyx which is sometimes up for sale and let it take a whack at the drive.
It must be an original, since Vorpal aligns the drive to the waveform
generated by its host disk. This is probably the easiest way and I've
aligned several drives with this utility.

-- 
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
 Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser_at_stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- FORTUNE: Today is an excellent day to have a totally rotten day. -----------
Received on Sun Dec 16 2001 - 15:43:02 GMT

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