Uncreative Labs

Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 23 Location: Poland

My XT came with half-working ST-412 hard drive, that needed a warm-up (it was described in another thread).
I was thinking if I could resolve problem in any way, but I gave up and put in it ST-225 drive.

One time I found solution in Jorg's thread on VC forums, where he wanted to move track 0.
It's simple trick to fool optic sensor, with making stepper motor's arm longer, that moves track 0 and all other tracks deeper to the middle of plattern.
In my case it helped, now hard drive works okay, of course it's still veery slowly Wink

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That method may make ST-412's life longer for year or half...
I think, that apply only to Seagate's disks, as WD12s had another method of detecting track 0, or sensor and arm was just inside the case.

Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Posts: 127 Location: LI, NY

...Funny I had a post about my dead Seagate MFM drive a while back. (Points to name similarities).

Mine is a different situation. I'm lazy and don't feel like buying another drive to take it's circuit board to get mine working again... lol

Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 23 Location: Poland

Actually the drive don't work Wink

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Worked okay for about 2 weeks and then it started to display familiar 'Disk boot error' message.

I tought about replacing drive with another ST-412 or WD12 (isn't it called WD10?), but that would cost me about 25 dollars, because I can't buy one in Poland...

Actually I use ST-255 with DTC 5150BX controller and that works ok.

Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Posts: 127 Location: LI, NY

I have an RLL drive that I get to spin up after sitting by turning the platters manually for a little bit before plugging it back into the computer. (I'm sure it's making terrible "stuck" marks on the disk from the read head attaching to it though. Razz

)

$25 seems like a lot, that's why I haven't replaced mine either. lol

Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 23 Location: Poland

Shipping would be about 20$...

Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Posts: 127 Location: LI, NY

Yikes! Is that Euro or USD?

Also, do they have a Ebay site for your country? I know Ebay seems to have one for almost every country.

Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 23 Location: Poland

20 USD

Yes, we have Ebay, but I was looking there maybe 2 months ago last time.
It came to late, there is another auction service wich is online since ~1999 and majority use it rather than Ebay.