today on The Bench of Healing™ -- an original IBM 360K 5.25" drive.
it's very dusty
ooh there's a floppy disk still inside! it's also very dusty
IBM SOURCE INSPECTION. what does H/T mean 🤔
yep, dusty
this drive has two heads. the original IBM 5150 came with a single-sided drive at first, with a capacity of 160K (later versions of DOS extended this to 180K)
you can use a strobe light to adjust the motor speed.
if you look underneath the drive latch, you can tell that this is a 48 track per inch drive, double sided recording.
discovered that the plastic guide rails are just press fit into the metal casting. naturally the plastic tabs had broken off at some point. let's see if a little glue will hold.
hooked it up to my bench PC, let's see what it does.
the motor speed is dead on!
why won't it work, he asked stupidly, while holding the connectors from the rear/write head. 🤦♂️
much better
yeah this isn't great. I'm thinking about how to remove the plastic pegs
decided to drill into it and thread a screw in
snip
drilled holes in the other piece so they fit together
this provides a lot more surface area for the glue.
removing dust using my new favorite tool: ColorCoral.
here's another drive. someone's put a RAM chip in the socket meant for the terminator resistor array 😂
something is wrong with the belt. can't quite put my finger on it 🤔
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i've been thinking about the Surfside condo collapse. 🧵
i'm a bit hesitant to write about it, mostly because i keep thinking about the folks trapped in the rubble. it makes an engineering discussion seem a bit cold-hearted.
but engineering affects all of our lives -- which, on a daily basis, literally depend on engineers doing a good job. most people take this for granted. it's probably why a catastrophic failure like this can affect us so deeply.
a while ago i picked up this old DAT drive for a very good price. let's see if i can get it working!
it is the Mitsumi DK4-SS4001, a SCSI DAT drive.
took out a bunch of screws and now we're in! DAT drives use a helical scanning system just like an old VCR, but in miniature. the round thing in the middle is the rotating head.