• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Ext. SCSI HDD Not Working

fargo

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 6, 2019
Messages
82
I got a nice Macintosh Plus with an external SCSI hard disk drive. The computer works well, but the HDD does not. The drive is not recognized by the system at all. I tested it with two Macs (Plus and SE) using two different SCSI cables and terminators and got the same result. I'm not sure whether the external case is the problem or the drive itself.

Any idea how to approach this situation? Will it be a good idea to open the disk cover and check for stuck heads?
 

Attachments

  • photo61031.jpg
    photo61031.jpg
    165.3 KB · Views: 1
The first thing you need to do is verify the power supply is actually working, and working properly. Blindly trusting decades old power supplies with no known history is one of the biggest reasons vintage gear dies. Unplug the hard drive and put a dummy load, like a few fans and measure the voltage. The yellow wire should be +12v and the red wire should be +5v. Both rails should be within 5% of those voltages, if they're outside that range, don't use the supply. The next thing that should be checked is the ripple current, but that requires an oscilloscope. Ripple current is just as important as voltage, you can have a correct voltage, but off the charts ripple current and still kill anything powered by it. Assuming a properly designed SMPS, high ripple is usually caused by old degraded capacitors, which can happen if they sit unused for long periods of time, or are not stored in proper conditions.

If you don't have a way to test the power supply, use another power supply, like an ATX computer supply to power the hard drive, so you have a known good power source.

Assuming you have a known good power source, but the hard drive doesn't spin up, unplug it IMMEDIATELY. If you leave it powered on in a state where the spindle is stuck, you can blow out the motor control IC or damage the motor internally if it doesn't have any protections to shut itself down. Many old drives don't and can kill themselves. Take the drive and turn it on its side and give it a few taps flat on a desk and try powering it up again to see if it spins. You may also try running it upside down. If it runs upside down, it usually means something is wrong with the spindle bearings, like the lube is gummed up. There is no fix for this unfortunately, other than running the drive upside down and hope that the remaining lubrication remixes itself well enough to keep the drive going for awhile.
 
Back
Top