Post by Pinacolada on Dec 27, 2006 15:11:08 GMT -5
Hey folks. Thought I'd post a general question here about a 1541-II that's having its troubles. It worked great until 2 weeks ago. Then suddenly it won't read any disks, commercially formatted or otherwise.
The drive powers up ok, no blinking LED's indicating diagnostic trouble. I can type LOAD"$",8 and it gronks away and says DRIVE NOT READY. I tried Torquemada, and it reports FDC error #3 which translates into, um, I think DOS error 21 or 23 (read error), according to my dead tree copy of "Inside Commodore DOS"... oh. I also recall something about "no sync mark" mentioned in either the manual, or another diagnostic program I was using at one point. (Maybe one was by Commodore themselves, I don't recall. I'll have to re-trace my steps and take better notes... I have a mind like a steel trap; unfortunately it's about as rusty.)
I do have a cleaning disk, but I'm out of isopropyl (sp?) alcohol that they recommend you douse it with to clean heads... that possibility did occur to me, that it might just be a dirty read/write head. Is there anything else that might work in its place, or should I run out and get a little bottle of it?
But I forged ahead and took apart the drive anyway, fiddled with moving the "ears" of the stepper motor around, slowly seeing whether that would change anything (I'm assuming an alignment problem here, but maybe not). It occurred to me that I used to have a program (of course I can't find the one disk I saved it on, natch) that tracked alignment. The main features I can remember about it are these:
1) It had two tests, one called a Peltier test which moved the head from track 35 to track 1, then to track 34, then track 2, and so on and so forth. I forget what the other test was called, honestly.
2) It had another test which just continuously spun the disk and reported on sync status, you could use keys to move up and down by half-tracks or whole tracks. It had a high tone (I think) for when it read stuff in correctly, and a low tone when it had trouble reading in the stuff (if memory serves me).
I don't remember what this program was called, can anyone fill in the blanks, and/or send me the program? I would be most grateful, even if just to have it back in my collection of utilities... it saved my bacon once.
The drive powers up ok, no blinking LED's indicating diagnostic trouble. I can type LOAD"$",8 and it gronks away and says DRIVE NOT READY. I tried Torquemada, and it reports FDC error #3 which translates into, um, I think DOS error 21 or 23 (read error), according to my dead tree copy of "Inside Commodore DOS"... oh. I also recall something about "no sync mark" mentioned in either the manual, or another diagnostic program I was using at one point. (Maybe one was by Commodore themselves, I don't recall. I'll have to re-trace my steps and take better notes... I have a mind like a steel trap; unfortunately it's about as rusty.)
I do have a cleaning disk, but I'm out of isopropyl (sp?) alcohol that they recommend you douse it with to clean heads... that possibility did occur to me, that it might just be a dirty read/write head. Is there anything else that might work in its place, or should I run out and get a little bottle of it?
But I forged ahead and took apart the drive anyway, fiddled with moving the "ears" of the stepper motor around, slowly seeing whether that would change anything (I'm assuming an alignment problem here, but maybe not). It occurred to me that I used to have a program (of course I can't find the one disk I saved it on, natch) that tracked alignment. The main features I can remember about it are these:
1) It had two tests, one called a Peltier test which moved the head from track 35 to track 1, then to track 34, then track 2, and so on and so forth. I forget what the other test was called, honestly.
2) It had another test which just continuously spun the disk and reported on sync status, you could use keys to move up and down by half-tracks or whole tracks. It had a high tone (I think) for when it read stuff in correctly, and a low tone when it had trouble reading in the stuff (if memory serves me).
I don't remember what this program was called, can anyone fill in the blanks, and/or send me the program? I would be most grateful, even if just to have it back in my collection of utilities... it saved my bacon once.