stepleton
Well-known member
There is nothing too sophisticated that you can do through NeoWidEx or BLU until the Widget decides it's ready to talk to you.
The Widget has several subsystems, but the ones that are important today are the "controller" and the "servo". The servo is what swings the heads and the controller is what the Lisa talks to, the conductor for the whole Widget orchestra. Both of these subsystems are controlled by separate microcontrollers. The servo is pretty self-contained: in fact, the controller tells it what to do over a 57600-bps serial link! (TTL voltage levels I think, but still.) The controller is the topmost circuit board and is what the 26-pin ribbon cable from the Lisa plugs into.
When the Widget starts up, if I recall correctly, it tells the servo to reset itself, and then it waits for the servo to say that it has done this. The servo goes off and tries to swing the heads over their entire range of travel, but on your drive this is not possible because the servo hasn't freed up its sticky old mechanism yet. (Or maybe there's something inside the drive that's preventing it from articulating itself, but I suspect the former for now.) So the servo never tells the controller that it's ready.
I'm pretty sure the controller is just going to be stuck waiting forever until that servo is ready to go. There is nothing you can do with anything that talks through the controller until the servo is ready. The controller doesn't care about you at this point, it only cares about the servo.
My advice as always is be patient. We have seen signs of progress. Keep exercising the servo by resetting the drive. NeoWidEx can't perform the reset that BLU (probably) does, which involves toggling one of the signal lines in that ribbon cable, which effectively "reboots" the drive. Does BLU's reset cause the Widget to try and move the servo again? If it does, this is what I might keep repeating in hopes that the head will move a little further each time. If BLU doesn't do this, then I might try resetting the computer via the reset button on the back. You don't need to load BLU or NeoWidEx for this --- each reset ought to toggle one of these "reboots" and another servo wiggle attempt, I think.
If you don't want to keep doing this, then the ultimate Widget diagnostic tool is UsbWidEx. This is an all-in-one hardware device that (among many other excellent qualities) can talk to the servo directly. If you build yourself one of these, you can cut out the controller intermediary and reset the servo all day long, plus inquire about its feelings and do other things. I'm very glad to have one of these gizmos, but it may not be necessary for you if you can coax the servo into doing a complete swing.
The Widget has several subsystems, but the ones that are important today are the "controller" and the "servo". The servo is what swings the heads and the controller is what the Lisa talks to, the conductor for the whole Widget orchestra. Both of these subsystems are controlled by separate microcontrollers. The servo is pretty self-contained: in fact, the controller tells it what to do over a 57600-bps serial link! (TTL voltage levels I think, but still.) The controller is the topmost circuit board and is what the 26-pin ribbon cable from the Lisa plugs into.
When the Widget starts up, if I recall correctly, it tells the servo to reset itself, and then it waits for the servo to say that it has done this. The servo goes off and tries to swing the heads over their entire range of travel, but on your drive this is not possible because the servo hasn't freed up its sticky old mechanism yet. (Or maybe there's something inside the drive that's preventing it from articulating itself, but I suspect the former for now.) So the servo never tells the controller that it's ready.
I'm pretty sure the controller is just going to be stuck waiting forever until that servo is ready to go. There is nothing you can do with anything that talks through the controller until the servo is ready. The controller doesn't care about you at this point, it only cares about the servo.
My advice as always is be patient. We have seen signs of progress. Keep exercising the servo by resetting the drive. NeoWidEx can't perform the reset that BLU (probably) does, which involves toggling one of the signal lines in that ribbon cable, which effectively "reboots" the drive. Does BLU's reset cause the Widget to try and move the servo again? If it does, this is what I might keep repeating in hopes that the head will move a little further each time. If BLU doesn't do this, then I might try resetting the computer via the reset button on the back. You don't need to load BLU or NeoWidEx for this --- each reset ought to toggle one of these "reboots" and another servo wiggle attempt, I think.
If you don't want to keep doing this, then the ultimate Widget diagnostic tool is UsbWidEx. This is an all-in-one hardware device that (among many other excellent qualities) can talk to the servo directly. If you build yourself one of these, you can cut out the controller intermediary and reset the servo all day long, plus inquire about its feelings and do other things. I'm very glad to have one of these gizmos, but it may not be necessary for you if you can coax the servo into doing a complete swing.