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Comments (6)

Tube🌈 Time@mastodon.social ·

in the bad block table, it only has the marking "NONE". is this a good omen? is it still true?

warning stickers and bad block table sticker on top of the hard drive.

Tube🌈 Time@mastodon.social ·

i tried to power it up and heard a sizzling sound. this tantalum capacitor shorted out and then took out the series inductor leading to it. i had to replace both of them.

two axial components slightly larger than a 1/2 watt resistor. one is a bullet shaped black tantalum capacitor with a huge crack. the other is a resistor-style inductor marked with brown, black black (10uH). it has a crack exuding some sort of toxic goo

Tube🌈 Time@mastodon.social ·

oh yeah, and the spindle wouldn't turn because the brake solenoid was seized shut. i forgot they had these things, lol.

slightly rusty motor rotor with a ground strap leading to the center. above it is a solenoid with some sort of tiny retractable brake pad.

Tube🌈 Time@mastodon.social ·

oh wow, the Gesswein MFM emulator found the drive and was able to read it without any errors!

Board revision C or D detected Found drive at select 1 Drive RPM 3555.8 Retrying on cylinder 0 head 1 No more peaks in histogram Matches count 32 for controller NorthStar_Advantage Header CRC: Polynomial 0x0 length 16 initial value 0x0 Sector length 512 Data CRC: Polynomial 0x0 length 32 initial value 0x0 Selected head 4 found 0, last good head found 3 Read errors trying to determine sector numbering, results may be in error Number of heads 4 number of sectors 16 first sector 0 Interleave (not checked): 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Disk has recalibrated to track 0 Drive prematurely at track 0 after 1 of 30 steps testing fast ST412 seek Drive doesn't support buffered seeks (ST506) No sectors readable from cylinder 153 Stopping end of disk search due to two unreadable tracks in a row Number of cylinders 153, 5.0 MB

Command line to read disk: --format NorthStar_Advantage --sectors 16,0 --heads 4 --cylinders 153 --header_crc 0x0,0x0,16,0 --data_crc 0x0,0x0,32,0 --sector_length 512 --retries 50,4 --drive 1 --unbuffered_seek --begin_time 230000 root@beaglebone:~/mfm# ./mfm_read --format NorthStar_Advantage --sectors 16,0 --heads 4 --cylinders 153 --header_crc 0x0,0x0,16,0 --data_crc 0x0,0x0,32,0 --sector_length 512 --retries 50,4 --drive 1 --unbuffered_seek --begin_time 230000 --tran northstar.raw --ext northstar.bin Board revision C or D detected Found cyl 0 to 152, head 0 to 3, sector 0 to 15 Expected 9792 sectors got 9792 good sectors, 0 bad header, 0 bad data 0 sectors marked bad or spare 0 sectors corrected with ECC. Max bits in burst corrected 0 Track read time in ms min 29.291417 max 1224.240875 avg 40.145929

Tube🌈 Time@mastodon.social ·

ahh, the good old days when you had to tell your operating system how fast it could move the hard drive heads.

AUTO COPYRIGHT (C) 1979, DIGITAL RESEARCH Q3A. Enter Stepping Speed for Drive 1 (F=Fast, N=Normal)? $ Q4A. Is this a North Star HARD DISK System (Y or N)? $ Q4B. Give the PATHNAME of the Hard Disk Work File OR Simply type RETURN for "CPMWORK"? $ Q5. Do you want Read-After-Write Check (Y or N)? $ Q6. Enter baud rate of serial printer (9600 to 300) (for parallel printer, enter RETURN)? $

Tube🌈 Time@mastodon.social ·

looks like it contains CP/M 2.2 for North Star computers (North Star Advantage, perhaps)