UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Powered By Google Custom Search Vintage Radio and TV Service Data

Go Back   UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum > Specific Vintage Equipment > Vintage Computers

Notices

Vintage Computers Any vintage computer systems, calculators, video games etc., but with an emphasis on 1980s and earlier equipment.

Closed Thread
 
Thread Tools
Old 20th Mar 2023, 1:45 pm   #1
Elektraglide
Diode
 
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Hove, East Sussex, UK.
Posts: 2
Default Micropolis 1304 HD repair

Hi,

I have a Tektronix 4404 with a storage unit that fails to spin up.
I am looking for any advice / links etc for repairing the 1304 HD.

It unlocks, spins up, sits there at (apparently) correct speed, then spins down after 15-20 seconds.

Any ideas?
Elektraglide is offline  
Old 20th Mar 2023, 5:02 pm   #2
TonyDuell
Dekatron
 
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Biggin Hill, London, UK.
Posts: 5,188
Default Re: Micropolis 1304 HD repair

The Micropolis 1300 series are well-known for having a rubber bumper inside the HDA that turns to Evil Goo and sticks the head carriage to the end stop. As a result, at power-up the spindle starts, gets up to speed, it tries to move the heads to the first cylinder, fails as the head carriage is jammed, the control logic then doesn't get the servo information from the disk and spins the the thing down.

I've heard (but never tried it) that you can open the HDA in a reasonably clean environment (not a true cleanroom) and clean up the remains of the bumper. After which the drive will work well enough at least to recover the data from it.

One model of the Micropolis 1300 was sold as the DEC RD53 so searching for that might give some useful information.
TonyDuell is offline  
Old 21st Mar 2023, 12:03 am   #3
ortek_service
Octode
 
ortek_service's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2018
Location: Northampton, Northamptonshire, UK.
Posts: 1,394
Default Re: Micropolis 1304 HD repair

I've certainly taken the lid off similar-capacity (low 10's of MB) PC MFM/RLL 5.25 & 3.5" HDD's, back in the 90's in a not especially-clean environment, and they still worked afterwards.
I think I may have also tried cleaning the top surface with IPA, as may have getting 'stiction' where heads were sticking to surface, preventing spin-up.

I doubt a modern much-higher density 10's/100's of GB's HDD would be so forgiving / if you accidentally get a fingerprint etc on surface, it probably can't be resolved with a bit of cleaning with IPA. So these are no doubt a job for (expensive) data-recovery specialist, with clean rooms who have equipment to replace heads / transfer platters to a good mechanism.

I've also swapped-over the HDD's main control board, when there seemed to have been a fault on one of those. But it seems more-modern HDD's have parameters stored in the HDD's controller, and can''t swap these anymore.
ortek_service is offline  
Old 21st Mar 2023, 7:14 pm   #4
Elektraglide
Diode
 
Join Date: Mar 2023
Location: Hove, East Sussex, UK.
Posts: 2
Default Re: Micropolis 1304 HD repair

Thanks for that. Looks like I need to fix the capacitive keyboard first though.
Elektraglide is offline  
Closed Thread

Thread Tools



All times are GMT +1. The time now is 3:48 pm.


All information and advice on this forum is subject to the WARNING AND DISCLAIMER located at https://www.vintage-radio.net/rules.html.
Failure to heed this warning may result in death or serious injury to yourself and/or others.


Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Copyright ©2002 - 2023, Paul Stenning.