MV-III CPU vs RD53 drives

From: Peter C. Wallace <pcw_at_mesanet.com>
Date: Wed Jan 2 23:19:18 2002

On Wed, 2 Jan 2002, John Allain wrote:

> > I recently went through a box of about 6 RD53s, trying to find one
> > to fix one gone bad in a Xerox Daybreak, a few worked for a while
> > and then went bad as they all seem to. I ended up tossing all of
> > them, and using Seagate ST4096 instead
>
> q1: is the ST4096 Hd/Cy/Sct compatible with the RD53?

Has one more head than RD53 (Micropolis 1325) whether its compatible other
than that (ignoring that last head) I dont know. Just happens to be one of
the MFM drives the Daybreak supports

> q2: Do the RD52's, RD54's have this flaw too?

Dont think so, RD54's are Maxtor, Ive had much better luck with them. Dont
think Ive ever had a RD52

> (I have 4 RDxx'es, no 53's)
> Are these suckers all Quantums?
> q3: What's the biggest flaw with these, non-autopark damage?

        According to some information I googled for
(www-2.cs.cmu.edu/People/jmcm/info/rd53fix3.txt), the problem with
RD53 -- Micropolis 1325 is that the head stop bumper (probably urethane
rubber) gets sticky so the head servo can't move the head from the rest
position once the drive gets up to speed. This causes the observed
symptoms: the drive spins up and then shuts down. Supposedly this can be
fixed by opening the drive and placing a piece of paper on the sticky
rubber stop. Ive actually tried this but had no success. One drive (with
the same symptoms) I managed to salvage (because the information was
important) by swapping the circuit card, so there may be more than one
failure mode...

>
> John A.
>
>

Peter Wallace
Received on Wed Jan 02 2002 - 23:19:18 GMT