Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!lakesys!rich
From: rich@lakesys.UUCP (Rich Dankert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Failing Disk Drive & Strange TPA pointer
Message-ID: <328@lakesys.UUCP>
Date: 25 Dec 87 19:45:48 GMT
References: <1606@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Reply-To: rich@lakesys.UUCP (Rich Dankert)
Organization: Lake Systems, Milwaukee, WI
Lines: 56
Keywords: Big Help & Little Help

In article <1606@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth) writes:
>
>Boo hoo the disk drive on my 1040ST is not working. I know it is the drive
>because I have swapped it in other machines and the problem moved with the
>drive. The symptoms are strange in that it reads every track on a disk fine
>but has trouble writing. I say trouble because sometime it formats a track
>ok sometimes not, but never a whole disk. I had a look at a track it had tried
>to format and found corruption (gap bytes inconsistant & data damaged ie $E5
>corrupted.) If I can't fix this drive I will have to buy a replacement and
>that will kill my slim chance of being able to afford a hard drive.
>I phoned a company that upgrades the internal SS drive in a 520STFM to DS and
>asked if the same drive could be fitted inside a 1040. They said no, which I
>think is pretty strange since I thought (as most do) that the 520STFM was
>just a 1040 with a lesser drive and some RAM missing. Has anyone else put a
>different drive in their 1040 or repaired the original one? 
>If so please advise me.
>(Note: Our machines will be down(ish) from 24th Dec to Jan 5th)

	I have replaced the 1040 drives with the newer mech's that are 
currently shipped as external drives. Have had no problem with doing this 
at all.

	If I were you, I would clean the head with Freon TF, and get all the 
dust that usually seems to collect inside the drive. This is the main problem 
that I have seen in the internal drives, other than the eairly drives having
the write protect to go out, in which case I replaced it with a small micro 
toggle switch.

	I have seen drives that were running slow, and still read the data
onthe disk fine, but didn't write for ^%$#*( . Also have seen some drives
that didn't write well either and the cause was due to a mechanical problem
with a lever mounted for upper head pressure. Problem was due to this lever
being a little loose and thus making alot of noise (like ball bearings inside)
and just getting this a little tighter lessened the vibrations allowing the 
drive to again work well.

	One other thing that I noticed was that some drives, lost the 
ability to turn the disk at proper speed *if the drive was sitting in the 
correct position. When I went and turned the drive over (upside down) to 
further look at the problem, the problem was gone! Turn the drive back over
and the problem returned, turn it upside down, and the drive worked fine 
again. Weird problem. Unfortunatly, the direct drive motor for turning the 
media is not available from Atari, so a new drive was installed. One of the 
newer external ones. Problem solved....

>
> Neil Forsyth                           JANET:  neil@uk.ac.hw.cs
> Dept. of Computer Science              ARPA:   neil@cs.hw.ac.uk
> Heriot-Watt University                 UUCP:   ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!neil
> Edinburgh
> Scotland
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UUCP: {Ihnp4,uwvax}!uwmcsd1!lakesys!rich
Discalimer: The words,ideas,and expressions are my own, and not nessasarily 
always correct, but I wouldn't say that I have done it if I didn't.