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Re: Help! IIe won't recog. disk (cont.)
Ellen L. Kennedy (ekennedy@teleport.com) wrote:
(about trying to power up a ][e with only a disk drive and monitor)
One last thing to try. Shut the power off and yank out the disk
controller and 80-column board (if present)...take the ][e down to all
empty slots. Then try powering up. You should get a <BEEP!>, the words
"Apple ][" or "Apple //e" at the top of the screen, and an Applesoft BASIC
prompt ("]"). If this happens, then try powering down and installing the
80-column card into the auxiliary slot. Then try again. If that is
successful, try putting the disk controller (with no drives attached) into
slot 6 (second from the right). Try again. This time, you should get a
<BEEP!> and the "Apple ][" message (whichever is appropriate), and then
the machine should hang until you press <CONTROL><RESET>. My guess is
that if you get this farm the machine won't power up, indicating a bad
disk controller.
Of course, if the machine won't power up with no cards in it at all, then
you are probably looking at a dead power supply. Power suplies are
available; I bought one from Jameco Electronics, Alltech Electronics also
sells them, or you can get an external power supply from Steve
Buggie...but note that his are external units.
: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: After this I decided to try out another Apple IIe and disk drives that the
: school had sitting around.
: I connected my two disk drives to the CPU and Drive #1 lit up and the disk
: kept spinning and wouldn't stop. I did a self-check which gave me the
: "Kernel OK" finding.
Did you switch controller cards, trying the controller from the first
machine? Or is this the controller from the "another Apple IIe...that the
school had sitting around"? I'm still working on the first problem, as a
blown controller card can keep the machine from powering up.
: The disk I had been using must have gotten corrupted. Next, I tried a good
: disk with just the one disk drive hooked up. Drive #1 appears to be fine.
: Tried Drive #2 and red light is lit and disk is spinning.
: Connected Drive #3 and get the red light/spinning disk
: Connected Drive #4 same result as above
: Connected Drive #5 makes a terrible noise when reading the disk, but it works
: Connected Drive #6 red light on/disk spins briefly then red light just stays on
: Connected Drive #7 red light/spinning disk
: Connected Drive #8 it is OK
: Now I have 3 working drives.
: I hooked up drives #1 and #8. Turn on power and hear an electrical pop and
: smelled something. Nothing worked.
: Tested Drive #1 again alone and it is OK
: Tested Drive #8 alone and the disk spins and spins now
: I am afraid to try hooking up 2 disk drives on this Drive Card. I will use
: the one drive for now until I find out what the problem is and what to do
: about it.
You didn't say what kind of drives these are. Given your experience with
running two drives, I'm going to guess that you are using "Disk ]["
drives, which are connected to the computer using a ribbon cable with a
20-pin rectangular connector. These compare favorably to the Apple 5.25
Drives which connect with a 19-pin D-connector, and VERY favorably to the
Apple DuoDisk, which I presume you don't have.
I mention this because I'm guessing that when you connected Drive #8 to
the controller card, you probably misaligned its connector by one pin in
any direction. This *will* cause you to blow a chip in the drive. For
this reason, I recommend doing the following whenever you are connecting a
Disk ][...
1) Remove the controller card from the slot.
2) Disconnect Drive 1 from the controller.
3) Connect Drive 2 to the controller.
4) Connect Drive 1 to the controller.
5) Reinstall the controller.
: During this testing process, quite a few disks were corrupted. I made sure
: I used a good disk (which I tested with my other working IIe) with each
: test. Does running a disk on a drive with problems cause the disk to
: corrupt?
Not usually, but it isn't unheard of. Incidentally, when the drive powers
up, you want to hear <SCRAPE!><BZZZZZZZZT!> followed by the usual chunking
noises as the head moves from track to track. I mention this because
there is a fairly common problem with Disk ]['s that sit for a while,
especially the older ones, in that the head will kind of stick out in the
middle of the disk somewhere. You can sometimes cure this (I'm not
kidding!) by whacking the drive firmly with the heel of your hand. In
other words...
DRIVE: Whirrrrrrrrrrrr
HAND: <WHACK!>
DRIVE: <Scrape!><BZZZZT><chuck chuck chuck bumpa-chunk thunk thunk thunk!>
(disk boots!)
Oh, one other caution. Everyone will tell you to make sure the power is
off when you are bumping boards. What most people will forget to tell you
is to leave the CPU plugged in, and touch the power supply first.
Touching the power supply to drain static will do no good if it is not
plugged in to a grounded outlet, though.
: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Is it worth it to buy a new power supply for my IIe?
Is the ][e worth keeping?
: Are these drives worth repairing?
Do you have need of them? I'm guessing that at least Drive #8 needs that
one IC replaced; it is easy to do, I just don't remember which one it is
that usually goes out.
: Is there something wrong with the Drive Card to cause the electrical
: problem when 2 drives were connected?
Again, assuming you are using the Disk ][, I would guess that you
misconnected the drive cable. The two ports on the Disk ][ controller
card are wired in parallel except for one line, so if it works with one
drive, it should work with two.
: I hope I have explained myself clearly, as I haven't had any technical
: experience with these computers before. We have no tech support person at
: my small school, so if I can't get to the bottom of this problem, I am out
: of luck.
Good luck! Let us know how it comes out!
--Dave Althoff, ][.
--
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