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Hi All, I recently managed to score a couple of MO drives for relatively cheap money. In Japan (where I’m currently based), the format was very popular, so it’s indeed easy to find drives and blank media. One drive has already arrived, the second one is on the way, both SCSI units from Fujitsu...

Hi Guys, Update on this small project. I managed to assemble the adapter cable without any welding, just plain crimping. Result is quite neat and fits nicely (overall length: approx 30 cm, connector to connector). The board I have (v5.0a) must be powered, so I couldn’t do without the...

Hi All, just about to start building a 34->50 pin adapter for a SCSI2SD board. I prepared the attached document as “blueprint”, I hope it can help as additional reference.

My experience. PB 170 with severe tunnel vision issue, after a few minutes most of the screen was unreadable.  Vacuum bagged it (with vacuum cleaner, not pump, not be too harsh) with some moisture absorber (plus spacers for avoiding crushing the plastics). For a long, long time (2 yrs ago). Now...

I tried on a spare, defective (“lines”) panel I had. No effect. Putting the whole thing back together is almost impossible, alignment and pressure level adjustment are factory level job. Moreover, no benefit in regard to the dead lines, so I would conclude they are consequence of failures in the...

I did it with a defective display (“lines”). You twist back the metal latches on the rear of the panel and separate the actual screen from the control board. Zebra pads in between. Putting the whole thing back is almost impossible, alignment and pressure level are factory job. Moreover, no...

Hello,  the sad Mac is indeed curious, which code is it? As for the second floppy, the fact that the drive is struggling may indeed indicate lack of alignment. Did you already go through the problem catching procedures suggested by Pina? Out of alignment normally results into format failure...

This is interesting, I have experienced similar situation on some other Macs with 800k drives and corresponding flat cable.  Don’t remember the details, but one key part of the story was the flat cable, featuring a yellow line or a red line. Some versions of the drive would work as internal...

Hello,   Rotational speed is controlled by the Mac, so “recalibrate” is just a software tweak, for sure no firmware update!   If the rpm are indeed out of range, hall effect sensors may be the culprit (please refer to my previous posts).   As for re-capping, even though I replaced hundreds...

Mind that low and high readings are the actual low and high rpms recorded during the test. Cross check how far these values are from the nominal ones (I posted here some values some posts ago). There’s a button in the test window which reads “recalibrate”. It’s a software adjustment (speed is...

There’s no point in cleaning the felt pad, just desist. The only adjustment is about the tension, but that one is also normally unnecessary. Just clean the head, very gently and very carefully with isopropyl alcohol. Of course you need to take out the drive and swap it with the good one. Then...

Hello JDW, seen you video and checked your images. Seems to me the image is somehow corrupted, some stuff is somehow missing. Start from images you can download from Macintosh Garden, transfer them to a 68k Mac, I used a Mac SE/30 in the process. Mount them with Disk Copy 6.3: eventually you...

Hello, I will try and see what I can do for checking the disk image, I need to set up the network and stuff... Anyhow, the images I'm using are from Macintosh garden. I created them using a Mac SE/30 and Disk Copy 4.2. As far as I remember from my trials, both disk images work fine with 128k...

Good one. It happened to me to have drives whose mechanics were completely stuck by solidified grease, just totally locked. Easiest way to remove the aged lube is to detach the disk guiding chassis and submerge it into acetone for some time. 

I guess there's no documentation at all, so it's a kind of reverse engineering job that has to be done here. Unfortunately, my expertise in electronic engineering is limited, so I'm surely not able to grasp all the details. Anyhow, I personally use the module in the screen shot, which gives...

Hi Guys, some additional insight from my side on 400k drives. Good old Larry Pina's "The Dead Mac Scrolls" suggests a very painful zero track alignment procedure by rotating the stepper motor stator housing. At first, I would always suggest to play with zero track alignment sensor, which is...

Quick update from my side. The repaired drive is able to format disks and to go through countless check runs. However, disks are not readable by other drives. Means: zero track alignment issue. Means: a sea of pain. I'm giving it a shot, I've been successful with some 800k drives, but this one...

What I could see while restoring my drives is that the metal frame that is being engaged and pushed by the disks when inserted and that keeps the disk in its position shall not be deformed compared to factory status. Otherwise the alignment of the disk may not be totally correct and the drive...

I suspect a short circuit, one trace was severed and I had to restore it. Now the plot thickens, though, as the disk passed at first more than 1k random cycles in the test program, but then at the restart it suddenly start drifting and raising read / write errors. Then again everything OK, then...

I could have sourced a spare drive with that money, I know...