Powerbook 165 Hard Drive

[jwse30]

Yesterday I received a Powerbook 165 with a "bad" hard drive. I was able to format the drive and install 7.5.3 on it while I hunt down the system enabler for 7.1. So this morning I found the enabler and started installing System 7.1. Apparently my "Install 2' disk was bad and the installation wasn't able to be completed. A window popped up saying my disk may be damaged, but it didn't say if it was referring to the floppy or the hard drive.

I made a new Install 2 disk, but I can't seem to do anything with the hard drive. I successfully installed 7.1 (and the update 3) onto a SyQuest disk, but I can't do anything with the HD. Mt Everything states that it has a hardware problem. Disk First Aid and Drive Setup don't see it at all. SCSIProbe sees it. TechTool sees it, but doesn't know the capacity of it. And Lido 7.?? says it has a handshake error or something like that. I'm out of utilities to throw at this thing.

I even opened the case to make sure the cable didn't come loose or something (sometimes it spins up, sometimes not)

I think it's a big coincendence that the drive failed just as I was trying to install a new OS on it, but stranger things have happened.

Anyone have any suggestions or ideas?

Thanks in advance,

J White

 

[NJRoadfan]

Boot off the System 7.1 Disk Tools floppy or your Syquest drive and run its version of Apple HD SC Setup. If it sees the hard drive, click "Initialize", it will do a full sector verify and re-format of the hard drive. After its done, the drive should be automatically remounted.

 

[jwse30]

Apple HD SC Setup is what I had called Drive Setup. It doesn't see the hard drive.

Thanks,

J White

 

[techknight]

This is normal if the head cannot read the system tracks during the drive power-on init proceedure. So, if the head crashed or system area otherwise known as negative sectors is damaged, it will not read the drive geometry and will report Not Ready.

 

[jwse30]

So is there a cure?

J White

 

[Paralel]

Pretty much, buy a new drive.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Drive Setup (a much newer tool) doesn't always work with SCSI drives and generally isn't recommended for 68k machines. Try HD SC Setup if you haven't yet.

 

[techknight]

what brand/model drive? its possible the head is "stuck" and it cant move to read anything.

 

[jwse30]

I'll take a look (I didn't think to look while I had it open the first time). If it is the heads being stuck is there any repair tips for that that I can try while I have it apart? Are there drives more prone to that type of failure than others? Aside from that CF adapter, are there any other alternatives to replacing this drive, such as an SCSI to IDE adapter. I didn't study it too carefully, but it looks like there's a bit of room available (unless the trackball assembly occupies that space?).

Thanks,

J White

 

[James1095]

I've seen a few drives that developed a bad connection between the spindle motor contacts and the PCB. Cleaning the contacts resolved the problem in those, but that likely only applies to drives where the spindle motor has springy contacts that press against pads on the PCB. It's worth checking at least.

 

[jwse30]

OK, I took the 'book apart and it has a Quantum Go drive (160mb). I don't have the right size allen key to take the drive out and get much more info than that.

J White

 

[finkmac]

Those are Torx screws, by the way…

 

[techknight]

Quantum? Yep. Those use what I call "sticky" rubber. the head gets stuck because of the rubber bumper on the park position.

 

[jwse30]

Is there anything I can do to remedy this?

As for the screws, what size Torx driver would I need to remove them?

Thanks in advance,

J White