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Questions about a Bernoulli 90 drive

O

Old Thrashbarg

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I just picked up one of these drives off eBay, one of the later 5.25" external "Transportable" type. I know very little about these things, and in fact I've never even actually seen one in operation, so there are a couple things I'd like to have clarified before I go about trying to use it.

First of all, what exactly is supposed to happen when you hit the blue button? My drive came with a cartridge, but it was shipped with the cartridge still in the drive (which doesn't strike me as a particularly good idea). I powered it on, and it spun up to a reasonable-sounding whir, so then I pushed the little button, it stopped spinning, made a click, and then... nothing else happened. I'm accustomed to 'eject' buttons actually, y'know, ejecting things, but is it supposed to do that or not? I tried lightly pulling on the cartridge, but it's offering a fair amount of resistance so I'm hesitant to just yank it out.

Secondly, if it is, in fact, functioning as it should, is there any sort of maintenance that should be done to these things? Keeping in mind that I don't know how well it was cared for or how much it was used. Blowing out any dust bunnies and cleaning the rear fan filter is an obvious step, but is there any sort of lubrication needed, or whatnot?
 
I've got a dual Bernoulli 90 drive. Calling it "transportable" would be a stretch.

But as I recall, pushing the blue button should get you an eject, so something's probably stuck in your drive due to age. I can't say too much as mine have worked since day 1.
 
Your drive is operating fine.

When you press the blue button to eject that tells the drive to spin down and unload the heads. The cartridge is in too securely for a mechanical system to push it out. You have to pull it out by hand.

There is a lock mechanism driven by a solenoid. If you attempt to pull the cartridge out while the heads are loaded (or while the lock is engaged) it will not come out. Do not force it. The blue button should also release the solenoid so that you can remove the cartridge.

If you don't have a cleaning cartridge you will need to find one.


Mike
 
Mike's right--I just went and pulled the beast out and checked--it has been perhaps 15 yeas since I last powered the thing on.

While the cartridge is inserted and engaged, the green LED near the blue eject button should be illuminated. Push the blue button and the LED blinks, the drive spins down and you should hear a soft "clunk" and the LED goes out. You can then pull the cartridge out.

If the locking solenoid is stuck, that last step won't work.
 
Congrats, you now own one of the most reliable products Iomega produced! If you've ever had to use Zip drives/disks, you'll be amazed by the speed and reliability of "Bernoulli Box" drives. I used a 90 MB external for years as a backup device, and being SCSI it even made the switch to MINIX and then Linux with me.

Naturally, all of the above is correct. The loud "ca-chunk" at the end of the spindown sequence means you should be able to pull the cartridge out. They're very rugged devices.
 
OK, so the clicking is that solenoid, makes sense. I gave the cartridge a light tug, and it did come out. It felt a little gritty, so I took a long cotton swab with some alcohol and cleaned the edges of the bay and also the little ridge that holds the cartridge door open, and now it works a lot more smoothly.

There's a cleaning cartridge up on eBay now, so I threw in a bid on it.

One other observation though... I noticed while peering into the front of the drive that the head assembly looks a little odd. It's got the top and bottom side (I guess it's two heads?), with the disk fitting in between, but the bottom side is offset a bit to the right... not by a whole lot but it's certainly noticeable. Is that normal, or did something get knocked out of alignment?
 
I was never able to verify this, but I'm given to thinking that the BBoxes were all single-sided media. I can't imagine how the basic operating principle would work otherwise. It was a remarkable technology--a crash-proof disk.
 
I can't imagine how the basic operating principle would work otherwise.
Click to expand...

I hadn't really thought about it, but yeah, I suppose it isn't the sort of thing that would lend itself to double-sided media. If the disk is being drawn toward one head, it would, by nature, be moving away from the other one...
 
Crashproof? Mostly. But the flexible media is still prone to wear. It's being pulled close to the head by a special curved plate and it is contacting that plate.

On a conventional hard drive the media is not in contact with the head, so the media/head life is far far longer.
 
mbbrutman said:
Crashproof? Mostly. But the flexible media is still prone to wear. It's being pulled close to the head by a special curved plate and it is contacting that plate.

On a conventional hard drive the media is not in contact with the head, so the media/head life is far far longer.
Click to expand...

Far longer than what? Remember that the Bernoilli drives are basically floppy disks. Longer life, I strongly suspect, than a conventional floppy disk, no?
 
What I meant to say was, they are crash proof. But "crash proof" does not equal "lives forever."

The media is subject to wear. Given the nature of the drive mechanism the media is not going to wear anywhere near as fast as floppy media does - the media is not in contact with the plate in the same way that floppy media is in contact with the heads. But it's also spinning quite a bit faster than a floppy drive, and it spins much more because unlike a floppy drive, it spins whether it is being accessed or not. (There is an adjustable spin-down timeout, but it is measured in minutes in my version of the software ...)


Mike
 
I get your point, Mike. As a replaceable high-capacity media, it was pretty innovative. As the price of hard disks plummeted, it wasn't competitive price-wise. It hung on for a long time--the federal government used a lot of them right up to the end of the line. They were respectably fast and very reliable.

Sic transit gloria mundi.
 
Wow, I remember having one of these as well. The old Parallel/SCSI interface, and by the way as I recall it got very warm. Fairly hot. But, never had any issues with it back in the day when they were new.

It was pretty awesome because we had a 100MB hard drive in our 386 at the time. 90MB of external storage meant more games!

Clay
 
Well, I didn't end up winning the bid on the cleaning cartridge. Somebody wanted it way more than I did. But I did a bit more reading about these things, and apparently the later drives have a built-in cleaning mechanism... now that I look at it, there is indeed some sort of wiper that brushes against the head when it's fully retracted. I'm sure it's not as effective as a proper cleaning cartridge, but since the drive doesn't seem terribly dirty anyway (at least not internally), hopefully that's good enough for now.

I also picked up a few more disks... they're used, but at ~$2 each shipped I figure it was worth taking a chance.
 
You should have pretty good luck with used disks. That's all I've ever had, and never a single failure.

If you want to give the heads their 5000 mile cleaning, a long Q-tip and 91% rubbing alcohol can be safely used on the head surface, just as with a floppy drive.
 
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