VOGONS


First post, by jesolo

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Does anyone perhaps recognise this old Western Digital MFM hard drive?
There are no model numbers on this drive.
I want to low level format the drive but, I need to know the model number so that I can try and obtain the settings for the drive if I want to dynamically configure it.

Got this today with an old Olivetti M19 but, it's giving me an 1701 error.
Either the drive isn't configured properly or, it's had its day.
The light does come on when it boots up but, then nothing further.

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Reply 1 of 6, by torindkflt

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I unfortunately don't know the model off the top of my head, but that drive looks virtually identical to the drive mounted to the hard card bracket in my AT&T 6300. IIRC mine had some trouble with stiction and also needed low-level formatting to get working, so it wouldn't surprise me if yours has one or both of the same problems.

Reply 2 of 6, by jesolo

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Thank you for the feedback.
The drive powers on, I can hear the heads unparking, and then the hard drive just shuts down by itself.
Even tried connecting another PSU but, the same symptoms.

Reply 3 of 6, by Ozzuneoj

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It looks like the shaft on the stepper motor (black box toward the right front corner) is visible. See if it moves when you power it on. This is what moves the heads back and forth. I had an MFM drive that needed the worm gear on the stepper motor to be lubricated and worked back and forth, then it worked okay. Also, if absolutely necessary, you can probably open one of these and see what's going on inside. I opened the 3.5" miniscribe 20mb drive in my 5150 when it had an issue and it still works fine. I think because everything is so large they're less susceptible to being rendered useless by a speck of dust, compared to newer drives. That said, do it somewhere with as little dust in the air as possible, and be very careful. Hopefully you won't even need to open it though.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 4 of 6, by looking4awayout

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It looks like a Western Digital WD262. It was the first WD branded hard drive which was based on an existing model made by Tandon, the TM262. Both were cheap, unreliable hard drives, so it's kind of expected that it might have issues. An 8 bit IDE version was made later, making it one of the few IDE stepping motor hard drives on the market, while the competition switched to voice coil technology for good.

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Reply 5 of 6, by Errius

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If you zoom there's the model number in faded text on the RHS. Someone has highlighted the '2' but the rest is hard to read.

Is this too much voodoo?