RA81 spin-up probs

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Sat Jan 10 13:58:40 2004

Just been playing with some real DEC hardware today and trying to coax
some life out of a pair of RA81 drives.

Both drives are exhibiting the same fault - as soon as the RUN button is
hit they seem to try and spin up for a second or two before the spindle
motor disengages and the red FAULT light comes on.

I'm not back at the site where these are until next weekend now, but is
this a common fault that might mean there are a few obvious things I
should check first?

One drive was supposedly working when decomissioned at the site where it
ran; the other one was definitely running on the site I was at today the
last time it was powered up a short while ago. Curious that both of them
are showing the same fault.

I only had the RA81 user manual with me today - should be able to get
hold of the service manual for next weekend. However, I hooked a
terminal up to the diagnostic port on both drives. Issuing a "RUN DIAG"
command with the HDA offline shows all tests passed. Pressing the RUN
button as described in the manual gives the "Front panel function in
progress" message as expected, the drive tries to spin up and stops, the
fault light comes on, and I get dumped back to the RA81> prompt on the
terminal - it doesn't even try to run any of the diags that the manual
suggests it should do at this point.

Looks like something's overloading when the drive tries to spin up and
immediately shutting things down. The HDA is free to turn, belt tension
seems good, and the motor manages a few revolutions before it stops.

Unforunately I can't for the life of me remember what other lights came
on at the front of the drive along with the FAULT light :-(

cheers

Jules
Received on Sat Jan 10 2004 - 13:58:40 GMT