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  • Chipbytex64@awesome.garden
    Sep 16, 2026, 12:58 AM

    It does indeed seem to be a head pressure problem, as gentle pressure on the arm gets it to boot properly. The loading mechanism itself seems to be working fine. The only thing that clamps the head seems to be a spring. I need to read more of the manual to see if this is adjustable. I imagine it is somehow - pretty much everything on these early drives is adjustable (and sometimes needs it). I also want to get a scope on the read amp to see what that looks like.

    Close up on the head loading mechanism of the drive, which lowers the head with a solenoid.
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  • Chipbytex64@awesome.garden
    Sep 16, 2026, 1:49 AM

    Peeking at the analog side through this convenient header.

    A couple of wires connected to a header on the drive’s control board.
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  • Chipbytex64@awesome.garden
    Sep 16, 2026, 1:58 AM

    Well this actually looks fine. :/ According to the manual, this should be 0.2-0.5V p-p, and it's right at the high end. Pressure changes on the head arm don't change it, so I think my success there may have been a fluke?

    Maybe this means the problem is downstream. I'll have to look at the digital side.

    An oscilloscope trace showing wiggly lines that are analog flux data coming from a floppy disk read.
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  • Ian Scottpolpo@chaos.social
    Sep 16, 2026, 2:15 AM

    @bytex64 huh, that looks pretty different from the mechanism on the single-sided drives I have. Here’s the solenoid mechanism I was talking about on mine:

    Image attached toot
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