Retro peeps: Anyone have any tips for getting a SyQuest 88 MB drive to work? All cartridges spin up but it seems to fail the disc init check and just blinks green LED slowly (no red LED). Adrian’s Digital Basement trick of SilverLining’s “short test” didn’t work.
Apps that claim to read and seek don’t move the head. Self tests (with a jumper) do seek/move head properly.
BlueSCSI initiator doesn’t start.
Heads look clean/level/in tact.
Edit: Solved! See replies 😎
@paulrickards As I recall, it should eventually settle to a state where you have a solid green light. Until that startup test passes, you indeed will not be able to read or seek, the interface should just return a not ready state.
These drives may be subject to shorted capacitor drama on the logic board. Start with a visual inspection.
@pleonard @paulrickards welp.
that is PLEASING.
Retro peeps: Anyone have any tips for getting a SyQuest 88 MB drive to work? All cartridges spin up but it seems to fail the disc init check and just blinks green LED slowly (no red LED). Adrian’s Digital Basement trick of SilverLining’s “short test” didn’t work.
Apps that claim to read and seek don’t move the head. Self tests (with a jumper) do seek/move head properly.
BlueSCSI initiator doesn’t start.
Heads look clean/level/in tact.
Edit: Solved! See replies 😎
Here’s the motherboard from the Syquest 88MB drive. 7 electrolytics with three being suspiciously close to where the heads plug in. Wonder if it’s a signal/amplification problem caused by bad caps.
I started by replacing the two 10uF 16V caps (C7 and C25) with tantalums. I tried it again and the symptoms were the same.
Next, I replaced two 2.2uF 50V caps (C63 and C??). Here I only had through hole electrolytics so I had to get creative to keep their height down.
There’s three other 2.2uF 50V caps but they don’t have polarity markings. I decided to leave those as-is for the moment.
Let’s fire it up! 🤞
OMG it worked! 😎 The SyQuest 88MB has a steady green LED now after inserting a cartridge! After a bit of fiddling with the SyQuest Utilities app, I got it to mount!
Copying files from it is working, although a few files report a disk error. I’ll keep going and see how far it gets.
It’s always caps.
I leave you with some SyQuest ASMR sounds.
TIL that syquest.com is still functional! Not much there, former shell of itself after bankruptcy but still it lives. Last updated 2003 💀
@paulrickards As I recall, it should eventually settle to a state where you have a solid green light. Until that startup test passes, you indeed will not be able to read or seek, the interface should just return a not ready state.
These drives may be subject to shorted capacitor drama on the logic board. Start with a visual inspection.
@pleonard @paulrickards welp.
that is PLEASING.
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