RA81 spindle sensor

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Sun Jan 18 05:52:43 2004

Ok, we took the HDA out of one of the RA81 drives yesterday. The
bearings seem good - no excessive play - and we think the motor
capacitor is fine. Some wear on the motor + HDA spindle pulleys, but the
drive belt has a huge amount of grip so I don't think there's any belt
slip problems.

The front panel lights just indicate a "spin error", whilst the logic
board status LEDs indicate a code of 01 - pointing at the spindle
sensor.

I made sure this was dust-free, but still no joy, so either it has gone
bad or there's a fault with the logic board bolted to the top of the HDA
itself (sensor seems more likely as we have two drives giving the same
symptoms)

The sensor appears to be optical in nature - with four wires (red,
black, yellow and white).

So:

1) Anyone know the connections to the device? If so we'll stick the
output side on a 'scope next weekend and see if it outputs anything (of
course we have no working unit to see what the waveform *should* look
like, grr)

2) There are a couple of unknown-status RL01 and RL02 drives in store.
Long shot, but anyone know if they use the same sensor in any part of
their mechanism so we can do a temporary part swap with a (hopefully
good) unit?

3) Anyone have a RA81 HDA in the UK that's suffered a head crash or
other destruction and may yield a working sensor for us? :-)

cheers

Jules
Received on Sun Jan 18 2004 - 05:52:43 GMT