Reviving an 8-inch Hard Drive from the 1980’s!

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This poor CDC Finch drive has had a tough life, and it’s putting up one heck of a fight in its journey back to operational. In this episode, we get elbow deep into the drive and try to bring it back up, with some amount of success followed by yet more failure. Such is life, but it sure is a lot of fun battling the electrons and magnetic flux!
Regarding the cone of shame:
About two months ago, our little girl Junko stepped on a rattlesnake that bit her twice in the leg. We rushed her to the vet immediately, they got anti-venom into her and it was touch and go for a few days as she fought venom, injury and infection, but she’s on the road to making a 100% recovery. The skin and tissue under the bites suffered heavy necrosis, so everyday for the past two months we’ve been cleaning the wound morning and night and it’s slowly healing up. She’s almost back to normal now!
For more information on the MicroPlus check the episode here:
• Working on a Rare Cent...
Centurion Wiki:
github.com/Nakazoto/Centurion...
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Come join us on Discord and Twitter!
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Intro Music adapted from:
Artist: The Runaway Five
Title: The Shinra Shuffle
ocremix.org/remix/OCR01847
Thanks for watching!
Chapters
0:00 A brief look at the hard drives used by Centurion
4:45 What about our Finch?
6:08 What I think might be the problem
7:25 Replacing the SN75110
8:52 Testing the drive out
10:04 “That’s not good…”
11:51 Testing again
13:53 Checking the signals on the back directly
17:48 A different approach
19:33 What does the OS think of our Finch?
22:21 What did we find?
25:26 Broken again?!
27:43 Kitty!

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9 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 414

@philfrakes172 11 месяцев назад

I worked at the MPI plant in OKC where the Finch and Wren drives were made. The drive you have is actually a Wren II. I have in my possession a Wren I (36MB) and a Wren II (72MB). I used them on an Apple II believe it or not! Anyway, both are SCSi interface. Let me know if a SCSI Wren would be useful to you. BTW, do you see that round OKC test stamp in the Finch circuit board? It is black ink, and the engineers figured out it contains enough carbon to actually cause problems depending on where the test stamp is. They switched to purple ink, because it was found to be the least conductive of all the colors. Just a little trivia for you... :)

@UsagiElectric 11 месяцев назад

That's awesome that you used to work at MPI! The Centurion is unfortunately a bit different from the SCSI interface. As I understand it, the Wren they used was pretty much identical to the Finch and didn't even require a microcode update on the FFC controller card. Thank you so much for asking though! And thank you for the trivia, I never would have thought that the conductive properties of ink could cause issues!

@gcewing 11 месяцев назад

How ironic. "Tests passed, stamp it OK! Oops, now it doesn't work any more..."

@SeanBZA 11 месяцев назад

@@UsagiElectric Indian ink is made from finely ground carbon black in a water based adhesive glue. That gives the black, and thus it is conductive, in that you can use it to repair remote control rubber pads that are worn. Explains why all the military boards I used had that stamp applied, after the conformal coat was applied, though the ones from early in the process, from assembly and electric test, under that coat, were normally white, and well baked onto the board as they underwent thermal cycling and drying.

@josha254 10 месяцев назад

@@gcewingYes, how ironic.

@johnm2012 11 месяцев назад

I'd take a look at that voltage regulator again. Something broke the first one so it's worth checking that there isn't something causing it to fail. I don't like simply replacing blown fuses without trying to determine why they blew.

@umiy6299 11 месяцев назад

Older regulators have a tendency to die over time, they were built with quite a bit less protections than newer ones so a second of a slight overvolt or overcurrent event could easily kill one.

@kevincozens6837 11 месяцев назад

I was surprised that there was no check of the output pin of the regulator to see if there was a short.

@wtmayhew 11 месяцев назад

I always suspect capacitors when I find an inexplicably shorted 78xx or 79xx regulator. I’ve seen bypass capacitors which intermittently short, and finding those can be pretty challenging since they aren’t always shorted. I believe what I’d try next would be to get an IR camera set up with the board powered up, then look for anything inexplicably warm on the board. It is pretty unusual but not impossible for TTL ICs to spontaneously go bad; it is usually an input out of range or an overloaded output. The line driver being blown is more explainable because it is connected to an environment where there might be high electrical noise - which is by definition the reason for using amp differential driver.

@SeanBZA 11 месяцев назад

@@wtmayhew Suspect one of those moulded ceramic chip capacitors is shorted, they are rather notorious for doing a flame act if the 5V rail was capable enough. Simplest test is to grab a thermal camera, and pass a 1A current through the power rails, and look for the warm traces that get cold right by the capacitor, or a warm capacitor.

@brainndamage 11 месяцев назад

Could be input overvoltage (ac ripple?) or bad thermal contact (use paste)

@OmarMekkawy 11 месяцев назад

Please, just FYI, we don't care how long your videos are going to be. We just care about our retro entertainment dose. Thank you so much for your videos.

@christiandingfors584 11 месяцев назад

Well spoken. I can only concur regarding the retro dose. 😊

@workonesabs 10 месяцев назад

Yeah, but you don't want to go above 30 mins, as the HDD cannot run past that time...!

@ostsan8598 11 месяцев назад

The Finch may not have lasted as long as everyone hoped, but your excitement when the Finch chirped a bit was worth the hard work everyone has put into the Centurion project.

@Runco990 11 месяцев назад

On a side note... when you showed the pictures of a finch, I had to smile. I had a bullfinch as a pet a very long time ago. It learned to whistle several different songs. The poor thing was found in the rain gutter and nursed back to life. We ended up keeping him and he lived to a ripe old age.

@josha254 10 месяцев назад

Nice!

@AiOinc1 11 месяцев назад

As a collector of vintage hard disks, I appreciate your enthusiasm

@WhoLover 11 месяцев назад

Would you want to show them off on your channel? I've subbed and turned on notifications regardless

@AiOinc1 11 месяцев назад

@@WhoLover I actually have a separate channel for this! A couple videos are already up, including several interesting drives. It's "DiskMaster" with the poorly drawn profile picture

@TheDiskMaster 11 месяцев назад

This here is that channel, if you like.

@WhoLover 11 месяцев назад

@@TheDiskMaster oh, excellent! Just subbed :)

@petevenuti7355 11 месяцев назад

Any idea what interface a discus brand drive uses? What kind of controller? Mine has a 50 and a 20 pin connector.

@anddoug2586 11 месяцев назад

Tip for removing ribbon cables: Cut a thin plastic sheet to the width of the cable to make a shim. Insert the plastic shim into the connector along the contact side of the ribbon cable. Grip the plastic shim and cable and gently remove. This should reduce the potential ribbon cable damage.

@Ragnar8504 10 месяцев назад

Sounds like a good suggestion but I think the cable in the video wasn't your typical ribbon cable, it was solid tinned copper wires stripped and pushed into individual connectors. Feels a bit scary but if there's enough slack you could actually cut and strip back the cable if everything went south.

@DangerousPictures 11 месяцев назад

when replacing a regulator I always like to measure the output for shorts once the regulator is removed. Already saved me from burning another regulator a couple of times

@iamjadedhobo 11 месяцев назад

I concur :)

@Wim37u 11 месяцев назад

I do not know half of what you are talking about but i enjoy watching somebody who never gets frustrated. Great stuff.

@KeritechElectronics 11 месяцев назад

Ha! Love your enthusiasm - well deserved! The success blew my mind. It fills me with determination.

@UsagiElectric 11 месяцев назад

Thank you so much Keri!

@mikefochtman7164 11 месяцев назад

Just playing 'armchair quarterback' here, but I'd check that 7518 voltage regulator. If the first one failed because it was overloaded, the new one may have also. If that's the case, need to find a way to check the current load on it and try to track down an overload. That's just my two bits worth. :) Regardless, also enjoy watching you revitalize this old hardware. I remember doing head alignments on CDC 300 MB disk-pack drives (size of a small washing machine) and yeah, this stuff can be fun to tinker with.

@highpath4776 11 месяцев назад

that is what I am thinking - resistor gone low ?

@BadBrad23 11 месяцев назад

In the 90's I used to work at the Seagate plant in OKC and worked on the Wren III line in testing. That was a fun job.

@mikejetzer4155 11 месяцев назад

22:13: "It freakin' works!" Channeling your inner Adrian Black, I see :-)

@donaldhoot7741 11 месяцев назад

I had a really old HDD that still worked for years. Until one day I tried to run it and it failed. The "rubber" seal between the two drive covers had turned to liquid! I had never seen that before. Great video!!

@kpanic23 11 месяцев назад

The index clock of 60Hz seems perfect: 60 revolutions per second are 3600 revolutions per minute, a standard speed for hard drives back then.

@UsagiElectric 11 месяцев назад

That makes sense! My brain wasn't good enough to make the mental connection while the camera was rolling, haha.

@LeonDerczynski 11 месяцев назад

Oh wow, now I get the 5400 and 7200 more modern speeds.. And they're all multiples of 300, so fine in either 60 or 50Hz realms

@nice8D 11 месяцев назад

Always a good day when you upload a new video! The look on your face and the celebration when you saw that directory listing was priceless!!

@UsagiElectric 11 месяцев назад

I thought the old drive was well and truly dead, and then bam, life! It was an awesome moment!

@dickvalentine5847 11 месяцев назад

Do you have one of those thermal imaging cameras? Definitely helps to find shorts and you don't have to get burned looking for hot components.

@horusfalcon 11 месяцев назад

Dude! Your enthusiasm for this stuff is incredible. That, combined with your ability at electronics, mechanics, and electromechanics is a winning combination. The setback is just to keep you interested - how boring would it be if it was easy? 😀

@HelloKittyFanMan 11 месяцев назад

Haha, yeah.

@NorthAmericanSlacker 11 месяцев назад

"We're making progress. The error message has changed."🤣

@aCivilServant 11 месяцев назад

Love the enthusiasm when you were able to read data. Just goes to show, however, just how fragile these old pieces of equipment are. If it's not power it's logic, and if it's not those it could be media, although credit where credit's due, those platters and heads still appear to be in good working condition. Looking forward to the next episode.

@LeonDerczynski 11 месяцев назад

Outstanding work. Just like the last controller "fix"! So curious about OIXXGAMES

@johnm2012 11 месяцев назад

I noticed that too, at 21:52

@bzuidgeest 11 месяцев назад

First thing I noticed as well, and then he got started looking at the sources. Different priorities I guess 😂

@exidy-yt 11 месяцев назад

@@johnm2012 LOL me3 (or4!)

@UsagiElectric 11 месяцев назад

Thank you! I actually talked about that file, but it didn't make the final cut. It was one of the first that I opened up, but the file is empty. There's nothing in there. Either it's on a bad sector or something, but there's unfortunately no data in there to save.

@braddofner 11 месяцев назад

This is the only channel I actual like the intro to. Short and catchy. Thanks for another awesome video!

@capybaratech377 11 месяцев назад

My first HDD of my first computer, a 486dx, was a Quantum Fireball 850mb with windows 3.1. It was a good drive, slow and noisy but at the time we didnt knew any better. Then it started. 1 bad block, 2 bad block, 8 bad block, 40 bad block, 120 bad block. Nobody knows why, maybe too much heat, maybe the grease jammed the bearings, but the thing was dying. Some time later we bought a 20gb Samsung, it was night and day, fast and silent. Lasted for 15 years.

@HelloKittyFanMan 11 месяцев назад

Oh wow, I didn't realize before, but I love that digital oscilloscopes are so computerized now that you can take direct-feed screenshots from them! I remember when one or a few of the early ones I saw had a floppy disk drive, and I was like, "Oh my heck!" And now they have a USB jack and/or maybe an SD card slot instead!

@tookitogo 4 месяца назад

What I like even better are modern ones with good web interfaces, which let you grab a screenshot from the live stream of the scope display, right from the web browser on your PC, where you’re doing the documentation.

@station240 11 месяцев назад

I was suspecting the reason for the missing ready signal on the FFC card was due to a fault on the Finch drive. Given the signal is stuck high, a short to found on the Finch (or the ribbon cable). I'd look for all possible sources of shorts to ground/power on the ready pin, adjacent wires on the cable, tracks near the ICs involved, bent pins etc.

@FirstWizardZorander 11 месяцев назад

Maybe the Finch is actually killing drivers on the FFC card? This error matches what the drive did when hooked up to the first port, Could be worth looking into?

@cowprez 10 месяцев назад

I remember WAY back in the day - getting SOOOOo excited when I fixed something. A lot of people don't appreciate this excitement. Thanks for the video. Fun to watch.

@Darkk6969 11 месяцев назад

Wow. When you held up the 5.25" hard drive it looked familiar to me. I actually had that drive but as a SCSI 155 meg drive which ran my BBS during my teens in the 1980s. Bought the drive used at a computer swap meet. Wow..talk about going down memory lane! 😁

@Stoney3K 11 месяцев назад

Regarding the failure, the line driver was bad and the 7818 regulator was also defective after you replaced the line driver with a new one. Could it be that those components could have failed because of a root cause that is elsewhere? Because I'd look for that before burning through any more components and risking a cascade failure because the fault keeps moving around the board.

@jayslittleprojects1431 11 месяцев назад

I really miss this type of computing. it's just so boring nowdays (thought the compute power is so much nicer lol) Great job on the repair work so far and I am sure you will get this fixed again :)

@alistairmcelwee7467 10 месяцев назад

I remember in 1978 when entry to our school computer club was achieved by buying an 8" disk. I still have mine somewhere!

@octoguy646 6 месяцев назад

that bit when he waved his arms around after the heads self seeked I honestly thought he was going to punch it off the desk😂😂

@mikekopack6441 11 месяцев назад

I would also recommend getting a fan blowing across the circuit board when running outside the chassis… with all the heat generated by that voltage regulator, it’s possible it overheated and popped again. Normally it would run inside the chassis with airflow across the board helping wick away some of the heat…

@MrTylerStricker 9 месяцев назад

This brought back a lot (A LOT) of memories diagnosing PC problems in the heydays of the 80s/90s...nothing has ever been quite like this era of technology. I would often spend many hours researching or figuring out an issue, digging into the most esoteric of possibile causes... only to fix the problem, have it boot & run successfully & then develop a new problem about 30 minutes later 😅

@a_Fax_Machine 11 месяцев назад

Channeling Adrian Black with the IT FREAKIN' WORKS!

@RonLaws 11 месяцев назад

you say there's nothing exciting on that drive, i was pretty excited by the date codes, this bad boy was still in service in to the 90s!

@Stoney3K 11 месяцев назад

Weren't the 'old' Wren and the ST-412 "Winchester" a very similar protocol? I looked over the documentation and it kind of appeared like the FFC used something very similar to the Shugart floppy signals with only a few pins swapped on the connector. And the 8" CDC floppy is more or less a Shugart drive with just some minor modifications on the interface connector (Adrian made one of them work on an IBM PC). So could be that the FFC was just a run of the mill floppy board with some deliberate idiosyncracies to make it incompatible with anything except CDC hardware, and those would be pretty trivial to reverse. Things like reversed pins, inverted signals or missing terminating resistors. I wouldn't be surprised if you could make an adapter cable to run standard Shugart floppies and Seagate drives on the FFC (or the other way round if you really want to).

@kevinwingfield2007 11 месяцев назад

I knew a guy with an eight in hard drive. I helped him format it. He was pleased.

@cbmsysmobile 11 месяцев назад

I have some old 8" disk CP/M systems floating around, they have very similar looking hard disks in them. They're in storage at the moment so I don't know if they're CDC. I hope they are because your fault finding and repair will be very very useful. Thanks for putting the effort into getting these disks running.

@MotownBatman 11 месяцев назад

GAMES! I See a Folder with GAMES in the NAME!!!!

@AxelWerner 11 месяцев назад

This is like modern archeology. So captivating! 🤓

@Lighthouse_out_of_order 11 месяцев назад

I have absolutely no idea what all this was about. I just enjoy seeing the enthusiasm.

@Pulverrostmannen 11 месяцев назад

It is always when you are happy something gonna knock you down, But you never give up anyway. love the dedication!

@mianoso 11 месяцев назад

For the other finch drive with the 5V tied to ground, a current tracer probe can be handy as it shows you where the short is by "listening" to a magnetic field generated by a pulse train injected in the 5V rail. It can be tricky to use but probably faster than troubleshoot an entire 5V rail 😄. Marc Verdiell from CuriousMarc used it sometimes. The set I know is the HP 545A (logic probe) HP 546A (logic pulser) HP 547A (current tracer). You probably need only the last two. Love the videos as always BTW!!!

@mikekopack6441 11 месяцев назад

"Woohoo!!! Succe...... awe shit...." Don't worry, you have the technology, you can rebuild him! At least you know the platter, heads and mechanism are good. So as long as nothing involving a special custom IC goes, you SHOULD be able to fix it given time and effort... Hopefully the other one won't be so fiddly once you figure out what's wrong with it...

@muadeeb 6 месяцев назад

Poor kitty had to be in the cone of shame. Hope he's well now

@snooks5607 11 месяцев назад

incidentally just noticed that seagate has started shipping their 30TB+ HAMR drives

@SSJfraz 11 месяцев назад

Imagine going back in time and telling someone that one day they'll be able to hold a million megabytes on their pinky tip, 200,000 of these 20-30 pound drives.

@frankowalker4662 11 месяцев назад

Great thinking Meisaka. 👍

@RonJohn63 10 месяцев назад

21:37 Having date stamps from 1996 is pretty amazing.

@BalancedSpirit79 11 месяцев назад

Your passion for retro tech is refreshing. Thank you for all that you do.

@UpLateGeek 11 месяцев назад

Dude, you were right there! It's so tantalising to know so much data is just out of reach! Really awesome progress, despite this new setback. It's probably something simple like another chip gone bad. I'm sure you're already on top of it though, I can tell you're getting better at this kind of troubleshooting.

@kevindowd31021 11 месяцев назад

Dang at the bodge wires!

@IvanStepaniuk 11 месяцев назад

With some PC hard drives from this era, it was not always possible to run a drive on its side if it had been formatted while in a horizontal position.

@andykillsu 11 месяцев назад

I can’t believe they were using the Finch drive in 1996!

@highpath4776 11 месяцев назад

I assume they had invested 100K in the system, if it was working why change , though with general changes if a contract with EDS their techs probably were working on an upgrade path of logic for the data an were starting to port it over to a new hardware

@bloepje 11 месяцев назад

I remember I needed the help of someone to throw away my sun 2 hard disk. It was a plain SMD 19", so 49cm width x 80cm deep x 35 something high. I did have a 9" harddisk too, but that one was already broken. more than half of it was electronics to convert SMD as a "high level protocol" to whatever the drive electronics would do. Eventually I had a Hitachi SMD drive that fitted in my NCR tower 650. I actually never have seen an ST506 interface except at that time except for atari st with an ST506 to SCSI/ACSI interface, until I later got introduced to the PC. That was a step back.

@HelloKittyFanMan 11 месяцев назад

Oh no, I can't believe that drive went back to failed so soon after you got it working!

@HelloKittyFanMan 11 месяцев назад

Hahaha, I love how part of the VG's logo is a morph from an upside-down arrangement of the earliest Atari logo!

@SalvoMorina 11 месяцев назад

Amazing as usual !

@adrielrowley 4 месяца назад

Took a brief scan of the comments before commenting. I myself am wondering how it ended up five or six hours (forget now) away from Dallas in a dilapidated building. By the way, been going through the whole series despite not being as interested in computers, turns out a lot of fantastic information and glad to see a vintage computer come back to life. Makes me wonder what computers I used, the school district was not well off and started school in the early 1990s. I can remember playing Oregon Trail (loved that game) on a green screen, then in about 1996 we got color monitors, remember how amazing that was. That elementary school had all the computers in one room, I don't recall seeing a computer in front of me when using the green screen, so now thinking it was a mini computer and I was on a terminal. But, I have had two concussions, neither my fault.

@thelegion_within 11 месяцев назад

that's amazing that it was working (for a little while at least)! looking forward to the next installment

@jameskidd7906 11 месяцев назад

It is nice to see u so happy after all your efforts and hard work ....bravo

@michiel2722 11 месяцев назад

Loved this video. I was smiling all the way when you revived it. You'll get it backup again since it seems like an electronical issue. Can't wait for the follow up!

@michaelmiller641 11 месяцев назад

Wonderful!

@sarahgoo5541 11 месяцев назад

🎉🎉 well done, I’m really impressed with your fault finding

@tylerljohnson 11 месяцев назад

22:13 now THIS is the song of my people!

@chriszuest114 11 месяцев назад

Love to see my favorite Digital Archaeologist at work. What a fascinating drive. Keep up the good work!

@HelloKittyFanMan 11 месяцев назад

"That's one of the most important signals that can come off off the drive." Hmm, it seems to me like it would be preferred for that signal to stay on the drive, but then still be able to come _from_ it.

@rivimey 11 месяцев назад

Good stuff... really wanted /want to see more of this. When you got so very excited I was in fear you'd knock the drive off the table! Keep up the good work.

@LeonDerczynski 11 месяцев назад

Yeah I'm so nervous about that drive, would be great to see a simple wooden frame around it to prevent a fall :)

@VincentGroenewold 11 месяцев назад

Man what a journey! I absolutely love it and it's so awesome to have these ppl in the discord!

@UsagiElectric 11 месяцев назад

Thank you! The project absolutely wouldn't be where it is without the help of the people over on the Discord, they've been amazing!

@JustANormalAviationChannel 11 месяцев назад

Amazing!

@adrianstephens56 11 месяцев назад

Thank you for this video. It brought back memories. When I was a grad student in 1978, I inherited a PDP-8S (serial 12 bit word) which was obsoleted by the High Energy Physics group (they had all the money!). I got the machine working, including taking apart and cleaning the hard disk, which had a whopping 52kW of storage. It had fixed heads that were a fine copper wire wrapped around a couple of (looked like) transformer laminations. No miniturisation here. I loved the way the machine casually read paper tape at (from memory, so it might be wrong) 1k characters per second, and punched it at several hundred. If we tried to make one of these today, the cost of the mechanicals would be horrendous.

@williamsquires3070 11 месяцев назад

Hi. I’d save the data too, if you intend to try to compile and run the source code; that way it has some test data you can use to check the functionality. If you’re just going to back up the source code to an Internet archive, then I guess the data can go bye-bye, and you can free up space on the drive. Finally, if you feed the data into a parallel-in/serial-out shift register, you could feed it into your tube computer in lieu of the paper tape drive, though you’d have to buffer it, and slow down the serial-out clock to match the data rate your tube computer can handle. 😊

@thesteelrodent1796 11 месяцев назад

if it was used for a business, it's possible some of the files contain data you don't want everyone to look at - like personnel, financial, and tax records. Even 40 year old data can potentially be abused, so it's not a good idea to just upload everything to the archives without at least reviewing the content.

@miketriesmotorsports6080 11 месяцев назад

Cool project, man! Thank you for working to preserve our digital history!

@stefanegger 11 месяцев назад

date 1996, wow, and there are also GAMES on it RUN THE GAMES, I did not know it can run GAMES?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

@bzuidgeest 11 месяцев назад

Everything can run games, the bigger question is if anyone took the effort to make some. There seems to be a hint that someone did, but it might also just be something else. A coincidence

@stefanegger 11 месяцев назад

@@bzuidgeest the folder/file says "GAMES"

@bzuidgeest 11 месяцев назад

@@stefanegger yes and considering the naming of the other files with almost random looking letters, that might be coincidence. And from another comment from usagi I learned that there was nothing in there, he looked, but it didn't make the video.

@tony359 11 месяцев назад

can't imagine how many hours you spent on this thing and suddenly you see the files listed on screen... I know the feeling, it's amazing! Thanks for sharing that with us!

@wayne.o.farley5848 10 месяцев назад

AWESOME WORK!!

@VernGraner 11 месяцев назад

"The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat!" 😁

@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365 11 месяцев назад

I look forward seeing you fix the first port on the controller card as well. We can't leave anything broken ;-)

@UsagiElectric 11 месяцев назад

Oh absolutely! I actually have a MUX card and a 128k MEM card that have stopped working as well, so we'll tackle all three at the same time!

@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365 11 месяцев назад

@@UsagiElectric It's suprising how many faults your hardware is developing. A curse for you, a gift for your viewers ;-)

@ThomasTalbotMD 11 месяцев назад

i used to operate a minicomputer in the 80s for MetLife - it was a Honeywell system that used a similar appearing removable platter "Lark" drive. I bet these are related.

@mustacheboyo 11 месяцев назад

It is. I searched for it on Google and I found a specs sheet for that drive by CDC

@goldiemusic8394 10 месяцев назад

this is very underrated. thank you for your work.

@diyfixtool830 10 месяцев назад

Great video, thank you so much for creating and sharing your knowledge.

@wtmayhew 11 месяцев назад

Thank you! This video is a good illustration of methodical trouble shooting. Thanks for sharing.

@JohnKiniston 11 месяцев назад

Did you test the old SN75110 chip outside the drive controller? I bet you could breadboard up a test jig.

@DiscardedGod 5 месяцев назад

This is fascinating, tech before i was born!! love it! keep on

@Kboyer36 11 месяцев назад

I totally get your enthusiasm at seeing the drive actually start to work. I was the same way this weekend when I saw the Amiga 2000 I have been restoring for the last month finally power up and ask for a workbench disk. In both cases, there is more work to do but just getting that confirmation that it's at least trying to work is a massive relief.

@tekvax01 11 месяцев назад

David!!! Such a momentous win!! Congratulations sir!

@MarcelHuguenin 11 месяцев назад

Always nice to end the Sunday with a Usagi Electric video! Meh, too bad the Finch 'died'. I'm still very impressed with your fault finding and the progress you already made. Keep going, we love it!

@kencreten7308 11 месяцев назад

Thanks for all the interesting info. I will admit, I'm a little jealous of all the cool classic computer stuffs. heheh. Thanks for the videos.

@68hoffman 11 месяцев назад

i did enjoy seeing you get a win .it was bitter sweet but a good day :)

@HelloKittyFanMan 11 месяцев назад

Cool, I'm glad you got that drive working and found the data on its disk!

@reggiebenes2916 11 месяцев назад

I don't know much about these computers, but your excited reactions when you get stuff working makes me love watching. I can imagine theses old beasts can be a major pain to work with, so getting them to function is quite an accomplishment and deserves the reaction.

@rdwatson 11 месяцев назад

Congrats on the progress. Only suggestion is make the obscured information more blurry, some of it is still legible.

@DanteLanznaster 11 месяцев назад

My god this is truly amazing. Watching the celebration when the disk worked was the cherry on top 😂 You got a sub from a couple hours south.

@sjogosPT 10 месяцев назад

Subscribed. Amazing channel. I loved to see! Thank you

@shawnerz98 11 месяцев назад

I hope poor kitty has had the cone of shame removed. Like AiOinc said, I do appreciate your enthusiasm. You mentioned Discord in you video. I have a 5.25" MFM hard drive project. I didn't think about using Discord to help troubleshoot it. Thanks!

@simona625 11 месяцев назад

Your energetic exuberant enthusiasm David, is very infectious ......

@viperjay1 11 месяцев назад

I can only imagine your costly electric bill. It's really interesting to see all the old computer stuff on your channel .

@HelloKittyFanMan 11 месяцев назад

Oh yeah, I hate that kind of ribbon cable too; I haven't had to deal with it much, but it gives me the heebee-geebies!

@Dr_Mario2007 11 месяцев назад

Thankfully those ancient hard drives are a bit easier to repair being of DIP flavors. And note some vintage hard drives actually have their own processors (usually either 6502 or Z80), basically predating IDE technology in several ways being of early smart hard drives. And if its board is toast, it's possible to make a new board with Raspberry Pi Pico to read the data from the broken and frankenstein'd hard drive to grab whatever you want off it, it's important to find stepper motor inverter driver chip that fits the head stepper motor. I'd have to do something for MFM hard drive revival project someday as a way to rescue the data if the platters are known to be good, no scratchy noises.