HyperDrive troubleshooting

[JC8080]

I have a 512k with a 20mb HyperDrive I picked up a few months back, the HyperDrive was non-functional when I bought it. The drive itself did not work, a component on the controller board (the board on the drive, not the HyperDrive daughterboard) had melted and damaged the board. I just picked up a replacement MiniScribe 8425, the same model as the original drive. I was told the drive was working, and I'm inclined to believe the seller. When powered up the drive spins up freely, and the head moves back and forth freely during its startup check, though I cannot be certain the drive works, and I don't have anything else that uses an MFM drive that I could test it with.

I installed the new drive, and beyond the drive spinning up and the heads moving back and forth once, there is no sign of activity. I removed the HyperDrive daughterboard from the logic board and re-seated the Killy clip in case there was a connection issue from corrosion or something, there was no change in behavior. The board and Killy clip both showed no signs of corrosion. I checked the voltage coming out of the auxiliary power supply, and it showed a very steady 5.0v and 12.2v.

I had the idea of checking the MFM interface cables for activity using a scope. I have a scope, but know essentially nothing about using it, other than a couple videos I watched on scope basics. I checked all the pins of both the connectors going to the drive, and they all showed the same signal, I would charactarize it as noise, but I really don't know what I'm looking at. It looked identical for all pins. I was hoping to see some sort of signal that was different, that would suggest the HyperDrive daughterboard was trying to talk to the drive.

I booted the machine with the HyperDrive system disk and ran the utility, it said the drive needed to be formatted, I clicked format and immediately got an error saying the drive needed dealer service. There was no sign of activity from the drive during this process.

Does anyone have any thoughts on further troubleshooting?

Thanks

 

[olePigeon]

What version of the HyperTools are you using? I uploaded V3R1 to Macintosh Garden, so a newer version of the utility might be able to format the drive.

If by some chance you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, I have a SuperMac DataFrame 20 enclosure you can borrow. It's a SCSI enclosure that will convert a 20MB MFM drive to SCSI. Might be able to use it to test the drive itself.

 

[JC8080]

Thanks, I tried a couple versions, including V3R1, with the same results.

Unfortunately I'm in Seattle, but I appreciate the offer on the drive case.

Do you have a working HyperDrive?

 

[olePigeon]

I actually have a NOS one sitting in my garage, but I never installed it. I don't know if it's working.

 

[mgmac]

hi JC8080
for what little help I can dare, I confirm that the MFM drive was ,used in another system, then with other partition geometry and then formatted with another filesystem
I also confirm that on first power up the spin-up of the unit is the one you indicated and is correct as for head movements

I can't help you more since I don't know your controller, interface MFM for Mac 512k
I hope you will soon be able to make all your beautiful Mac work well

 

[JC8080]

hi JC8080
for what little help I can dare, I confirm that the MFM drive was ,used in another system, then with other partition geometry and then formatted with another filesystem
I also confirm that on first power up the spin-up of the unit is the one you indicated and is correct as for head movements

I can't help you more since I don't know your controller, interface MFM for Mac 512k
I hope you will soon be able to make all your beautiful Mac work well

Thank you, yes I never doubted the drive you sold me works, I believe I have a problem with the controller.

 

[olePigeon]

@JC8080 Does yours have the fancy plastic killy clip? Or the metal one? Mine has the metal one, and when I fiddled with it, it was quite the chore to get it to snap onto the CPU correctly. I think it originally came with a special tool, but I don't have it.

If it's the plastic killy clip, then that also needs to be pressed rather firmly.

Edit: But I guess if it sees the board but not the HDD, then it could be something else. Hmm.

 

[JC8080]

@JC8080 Does yours have the fancy plastic killy clip? Or the metal one? Mine has the metal one, and when I fiddled with it, it was quite the chore to get it to snap onto the CPU correctly. I think it originally came with a special tool, but I don't have it.

If it's the plastic killy clip, then that also needs to be pressed rather firmly.

Edit: But I guess if it sees the board but not the HDD, then it could be something else. Hmm.

My Killy Clip looks like the one in JDW's video (

) at the 7:30 mark. Plastic on the edges that clip over the chip, then metal on the ends of the clip. I believe I was able to get it to seat fully. JDW's video shows him re-installing the clip around the 12:55 mark.

I'm actually not sure the board is recognized at all. The machine boots up to a normal flashing floppy icon and acts like the board isn't installed. I should try booting the HyperDrive V3R1 boot disk on one of my other machines and see what happens. Running the utility from the non-HyperDrive machine could give an indication of whether the HyperDrive machine is seeing the board at all. I did try running the utility in mini vMac out of curiosity, and it gave a message that it could only be run from a HyperDrive. So I'm not sure if the fact the utility opens on my HyperDrive machine means it's recognizing the board.

 

[JC8080]

I booted my other 512ke with the HyperDrive V3R2 system disk and ran the Manager utility, I got a message that said "Warning! This application only runs on HyperDrives." This is different than my HyperDrive machine which pops up with a message that says the drive needs to be formatted. This suggests that the HyperDrive board is being recognized on some level, but it's not able to talk to the drive.

When I get that message saying the drive needs to be formatted, if I click OK I instantly get a message saying the drive could not be formatted and needs dealer service. This pops up right away and there is no action from the drive, so I don't think it is actually getting as far as checking the drive and trying to start the formatting.

 

[JC8080]

I finally found a replacement HyperDrive 20 board from a Mac Plus. I bought it un-tested off eBay and expected the worst, but I was pleasantly surprised and the board works great. It is a later version than the one that came in my machine, however it seems to be fully compatible.