Re: Failed 5.25" Disk Drives

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

steve wrote:

>"Terry Olsen" <tolsen64@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>vojloamp59tj9a@corp.supernews.com">news:vojloamp59tj9a@corp.supernews.com...
>> I had a guy come over to my house to buy a 5.25" disk drive because his
>> weren't working.  Scenario went something like this...
>>
>> 1. He brought his IIe system & disk drives.  Hooked it up, turned it on.
>> Drives light up, spin, but don't boot or read.  No head movement or
>standard
>> "machine gun" booting sound.  Tried both his drives daisy-chained, reverse
>> daisy-chained, and each individually.
>>
>> 2. Hooked one of my drives up by itself. Booted fine, read/write fine.
>>
>> 3. Wanted to try his drives.  Daisy-chained one of his drives off of mine,
>> turned computer on, nothing.  My drive now acting like his.  Unhooked his
>> drive, tried mine alone and it is now toast.
>>
>> 4. Grabbed another drive from my stock, hooked it up by itself, works
>fine.
>> Daisy-chained my newly "toasted" drive and tried it again, toasted another
>> drive. Now I have 2 bad drives.
>>
>> 5. Grabbed 2 more drives from my stock, plugged them in, they work fine.
>> Sold him the two working drives (didn't charge him for the drives we
>toasted
>> while troubleshooting).  Told him to mark them as bad so he wouldn't hook
>> them up.  Sent him home
>>
>> Now...I have 2 toasted drives.  What in the world can blow a drive up in
>> such a way that the newly toasted drive will become the bomb that toasts
>> other drives?  What do I do with the drives now?  Can they be fixed?  Do I
>> throw them away?  Any advice?
>
>Probably a bad analog board.  I know that is the problem with one of my 5.25
>disk drives.

That's a safe assumption, since, apart from the cable, the analog board is
the only thing "connected".

The question is, what failure on an analog board can cause the same
failure on other, daisychained, analog boards?  I don't recall hearing
about such a virulent problem with these drives before.

-michael

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