Didn't take long for the cats' hair to get inside the 5170 LOL... The voltage checker and floppy controller that shows drive letter and read location are really helpful in debugging.
Sadly the old MFM drive failed out, tried to recover but won't hold a format. It's ok, there are many options 😊
Going to look at updating the bios possibly to support larger drives.
#vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #IBM #5170 #80286
RIP old hard drive 🫡
Any idea what happened to it?
@argv_minus_one Not sure. When I got the system, the original owner noted they heard a pop and smelled smoke, so I know the powersupply went as smelled of hardware death.
I was having issues reading/writing to the drive. I tried a low level format, and it refused to partition and format after. Open to ideas :)
Ouch. ☠️
I was gonna say you might need Adrian Black's skills, but I remember a video where he tested a big pile of MFM drives, and every last one of them was toast. He couldn't save any.
Mostly mechanical failures, though. One of them, the head was stuck to the platter and got *torn off* when the drive spun up.
Spindle motor wins. Fatality.
There was even a word for it: stiction.
Is the drive spinning?
If not I've used a trick to start them: grasp the powered-on drive firmly around the edges and flick it back and forth around the axis of the platters. Wheee.
It's so long ago I can't remember much of the detail.
Perhaps something about bad sectors on track 0. I'm pretty sure I usually solved that problem by replacement.
Do you need to get the data off it?
Perhaps something about bad sectors on track 0. I'm pretty sure I usually solved that problem by replacement.
is the error for sure. I do not need any data at this point as "new to me" :)
I think that error is why newer drives have a landing zone separate from the data area.
Perhaps a mechanical tweak could move track zero datawards from the damaged area.
There were likely manufacturer's software tools for that, but almost certainly unobtainium.
Emily
argv minus one
zl2tod