[Coco] Another disk question.

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 19 March 2017 11:10:07 Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> Well, I have made some headway (thanks Bob Gault) with my
> 5.25" drives.  For whatever reason many of them were in fact
> rotating very fast. Some had strobe patterns on the spindle
> confirming this.
>
> Next question.
>
> I would like to convert most of my stuff to 3.5" as they
> are much  more reliable (at least from my experience).  I have
> probably two dozen drives of various makes and ages. two of them
> work perfectly.  The rest seem to never appear "ready".

Can you hear them moving? They also suffer carriage stiction just like 
the 5.25's from dry dirty rods, and worse, the grease on the head motors 
lead screws seems to harden in place. Clean them both up nice and shiny 
and re-lube with light grease. Good for 5+ years in a clean environment, 
just long enough to forget. :)

Some may have a teeny photocell rigged to sense the edge of the disk or 
the dropped state of the disk carriage.  It could fail, but I've never 
seen one knocked out of place.  Yet.

> Is there 
> some signal that not all 3.5" drives provide that non-PC systems
> need in order to use these drives?
>
> bill


Cheers, Gene Heskett
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