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Kaypro II drive problem

I have an odd issue with my Kaypro II's drives maybe someone can point me in the right direction. Machine runs fine, it tries to seek but the head only moves maybe half an inch and stops so it' can't read any disks. I thought it was the stepper so I swapped the other drive just to make sure and it exhibits the exact same behavior so that makes me thing something on the main board? Any thoughts? Both drives the head moves pretty easily, nothing is siezed.

Thanks!
brian
 
Not sure exactly what you're describing here. The drives are 48 tracks-per-inch and allow for 40 usable tracks. The heads can only move about 0.8". All that is needed to boot is to get to track 0. The only reason the heads would making full-travel is if it were trying to read data off the end of the disk, which would mean that you already booted and were trying to read a file that has allocated data near the end of the disk. Are you able to boot CP/M? When do you run into problems reading the disk?
 
durgadas311 said:
Not sure exactly what you're describing here. The drives are 48 tracks-per-inch and allow for 40 usable tracks. The heads can only move about 0.8". All that is needed to boot is to get to track 0. The only reason the heads would making full-travel is if it were trying to read data off the end of the disk, which would mean that you already booted and were trying to read a file that has allocated data near the end of the disk. Are you able to boot CP/M? When do you run into problems reading the disk?
Click to expand...
Perhaps i'm mistaken on the behavior of a drive when it boots. Do the tandon drives not 'home' the head to the home switch in the back on initialization? I'm trying to boot cp/m 2.2f from a known good disk.
 
Yes, the ROM boot code will "home" the drive/heads before booting, but the only reason for head movement in that case is if something previously moved the heads inward significantly. It's possible that the ROM code steps in a couple tracks, but it would not be anything near 1/2". Of course, it is difficult to be precise about such things just watching the heads.

We may need to step back and start looking at other reasons for the failure to boot. Unless the drive is "thrashing" the heads (suggesting some sort of retry or software crash), there may be some other problem that is preventing boot. Are you certain you have a good, bootable, diskette?
 
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