[Coco] Burke & Burke Hard Disk controller

[Daniel Campos]

Some time ago I tested a RLL Drive, made by Prológica here in Brazil, with
my B&B Controller using HYPER I/O. Sorry, but the comments are all in
Portuguese. :-/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf9zTXh6v2c

Daniel

2014-11-21 11:22 GMT-02:00 Bill Pierce via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>:

>
> When I got the Coco system I have now (Dec 2011), it had a Burke & Burke
> dual drive system with 2 ST-225s.
> (pics here, at the bottom of the page)
> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/home
>
>
>
> The original owner forgot to send me his bootdisk, so I had to put
> together a boot, download the B&B CocoXT manual, get the driver from the
> repo, and put together the descriptors.
> Once I finally got the system to boot with the drivers, the HDs wouldn't
> spin up. According to the owner (and everyone else I talked to) the old
> MFMs need help sometimes spinning up. So as the org owner suggested, I
> rapped the corner of the drive case a couple of times with the heal of my
> hand and sure enough, the drives started spinning.... then the sparks
> started to fly and the smoke came out.
> After further investigation, and the cover off., I found that apparently
> in shipping, a screw had become loose in the HD case from somewhere (never
> found the empty hole) and lodged itself in the power supply. My rapping on
> the case apparently made it settle into the wrong place and shorted the AC
> line in to something else and <POOF!>.... out came the smoke. We all know
> what that means
> I found an old power supply (MFMs require waaaay more than a floppy) in an
> old IBM server case I had and I fudged it all back together.
> The drives would spin up, but /h1 was making a parculiar noise and /h0 was
> sounding right.
> I could read from /h0 but not from /h1. After about 15-20 minutes, /h0
> would quit reading. If I let the system set for a few hours and try again,
> I would get the same. /h0 would give 15-20 mins service and /h1 wouldn't
> read. I spent the next 2 weeks getting the data off of /h0, a little at the
> time
> I kept this going long enough to get all the data off of /h0 and onto
> vdsks through dw4. Then it all died.
> Eventually I got curious and opened up /h1. The drive head on the top
> platter was broken off and the armature had cut a groove in the platter at
> LSN0. If I knew how, I would love to take the rest of the platters and have
> the remaining data extracted, but in checking the web, people want $2k-$4k
> for that service.
> So at least I saved /h0. From what I found out from the orig owner, he was
> using /h1 as /dd and /h0 was his backup. It seems /h0 had been giving some
> speed trouble after it warmed up so he switched to /h1 as default. He had
> just recently backed up the main data to /h0, so I got most of what was
> possibly on /h1 (I hope)
> The controller is now in my "Coco Stuff" box and the drives in my "Dead
> Coco Stuff" box.
> My controller was the model shown in the ebay pic... just 2 metal plates
> sandwitching the board for a cover. Mine has the RTC, but not the CocoXT
> rom, though the socket is there for the rom. The org owner said he was
> going to get it later, but never got around to it.
>
>
> Bill Pierce
> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>
>
> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
> Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
> http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
> E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>
>
>
>
>
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