[Coco] Cleaning Coco disks (gene heskett)

Steven Hirsch snhirsch at gmail.com
Sun Jan 22 11:49:46 EST 2012


On Sun, 22 Jan 2012, gene heskett wrote:

> I've threatened to make a test jig I could clip onto the drive connector so
> I could start and stop the motor and step it in and out, but life kept
> getting in the way so it was never done back in the 80's when it was
> needed.  Ideally it should also include a slow, about 1 second counter that
> always sends like 31 pulses out, but only 30 in, so that it will be banged
> against the Trk0 detector.  The auto step one way or the other won't muck
> the scope trace observations all that much, particularly if your sweep is
> triggered by the index pulse, but it will serve to keep the drive from
> sitting on the same track for long periods of time, both wearing out the
> track, and causing multipass erasure so that eventually your good disk is
> destroyed magnetically.  Head magnetization state is generally not a factor
> in the real world.

I was lucky enough to score a Teaco drive test rig for $5.00 at a hamfest. 
It does exactly what you describe.  Just invaluable for servicing Olde 
Drives.



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