H89 CP/M hard-secored boot diskette

From: Patrick Rigney <patrick_at_evocative.com>
Date: Wed Apr 2 12:14:01 2003

> [Tony wrote:]
> Very odd...
>
> You might try checkking the index monostables on the hard sector
> controller (they only really do anything once per track, when the index
> hole between the sector holes comes round), but I can't see why it would
> then work for the first 4 cylinders.

Well, as it turned out, the stepper motor on the drive was locking up. The
further towards the inner tracks it got, the more it struggled, and it
wasn't close to correctly centering over any track beyond the first few.
I'll mess with that later. I was able to replace the drive with a spare,
and I'm again up and running. I produced several good test boot disks, BUT,
I don't know how well that new drive is aligned, it's straight off the shelf
from the As-Is room at Wierd Stuff. Rotation speed is spot-on according to
the internal diag, but I don't have a 5.25" alignment disk to check it
otherwise. Anyone who receives a boot disk from me is, therefore, going to
be my "canary in the mine." :-)

Next task... get the soft-sectored controller running. Unfortunately I have
no docs for this whatsoever, not even a schematic. I understand that it
requires MTR-90, and possibly a certain HDOS software distribution as well.
Does anyone know?

Patrick
Received on Wed Apr 02 2003 - 12:14:01 BST