On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> The mechanism taken by itself may have been reliable enough, BUT,
> since there was no track-zero sensor, (I think that's the reason) the
> "recal" operation rams the head assembly into the outside stops
> multiple times each time it is performed, and that's going to harm the
> mechanism. Do that enough times and the system loses alignment, which
> makes it prone to failure. As the drive changes in radial alignment,
> the data written with it becomes "off-track" so it will be difficult
> to read when the drive is realigned or when the diskette is put in a
> properly aligned drive. The consequences of poor alignment is not an
> Apple problem, though the Apple way of using the drives causes
> misalignment more quickly than with drives that sense when track zero
> has been reached.
I never had problems as you describe, nor have I ever heard of anyone
needing to adjust the alignment of an Apple disk drive.
As far as I know, there is no procedure in the Disk ][ manual for aligning
a drive, and as far as I know, there is no reason for needing one.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Thu Nov 08 2001 - 06:21:36 GMT