Chuck(G)
25k Member
Since this is an XTA drive, I'd be very curious to see if it responds to any I/O port reads. It could be that there's simply a problem with the interface board--that would be easy to fix.
Since this is an XTA drive, I'd be very curious to see if it responds to any I/O port reads. It could be that there's simply a problem with the interface board--that would be easy to fix.
I found this video on YouTube explaining how to possibly repair the drive by manually moving the heads but I'm not overly keen to try it on such an old hard drive:-
Here's something I've always wanted to ask: What happens if you turn the spindle the wrong way? Will you irreparably damage the might-have-been-able-to-save-that drive, or does it not matter?
]To get the drive spinning again, just rotate the stepper motor spindle (red arrow pointing to it) back and forth a few times, right before powering it up.
Some drives actually rotate slightly backwards on their own when they're first starting up or coming to a stop. No harm is done.
The drive sounds a bit more responsive than when I first tried and used it.
But the sounds it makes now is like the heads are not responding as it should which are causing the read and seek errors.
I have a TL with two of these Hard Drives. The Drives have failed and I replaced them with an XT-IDE Compact Flash card
The symptoms somewhat look like the drive needs a fresh low level format. Generally people say "NO!" to a low level format with an IDE drive. However that's exactly what I did on my Tandy TL/2, and it's not unheard of with early IDE drives. I used the original Tandy tool (HSECT ?) which not only performed the format, but also setup the configuration record so the system would see it as a 40MB drive.
In my case the drive was a Seagate ST157A/X with a "Do Not Low Level Format" sticker on it.
Worst case is a non-working drive remains non-working. But I wouldn't toss a drive without attempting to rewrite the factory format - if anybody is, I'll pay postage!