Re: Problems! Disk ][ drive just whirs and whirs; IIc monitor knob stuck; IIe enhanced not...

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

schmidtd wrote:
> On Apr 29, 7:53 am, Larry Stedman <sted...@binghamton.edu> wrote:
>
> > As to the drives... I tried swapping them--- neither makes the startup
> > rattling noise.  I'm definitely leaning towards the controller gone bad
> > idea.
>
> Take a look at the big capacitor on the controller.  It's probably
> marked C2 on the board.  Do the ends look bulged or otherwise
> damaged?  I recently plugged (not once, but twice!) a drive in with
> the header shifted one row to the right, and blew this capacitor on
> two different controllers.  A trip to my local Radio Shack and a
> little soldering cured them.  But the symptom was the same - whirring
> disks, no reading.

Misplugging a drive cable onto a controller header is probably one
of the most common causes of controller/drive failure.

It's clear that Woz should have insisted on *shrouded* header connectors
for the controller--but, then again, *he* probably never made that
mistake.  ;-)

-michael

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