6 replies to this topic

[freemonk]

Hi,

Today, my Atari 1050 Disk Drive stopped working. One minute it was working perfectly fine, but then i went to boot up another disk and nothing.

This is what it is doing:

When I turn the Atari 800 XL on with the flap up on the drive and with no disk in it, it will throw up lots of fast continuous 'BOOT ERROR' messages as it normally would.

When I turn the Atari 800 XL on with the flap down on the drive with or without a disk, it will do nothing for 1-2 seconds, beep on the TV screen, then show 'BOOT ERROR', another 1-2 seconds, beep on the TV screen and then 'BOOT ERROR' again.

I've opened the drive up and cleaned the little Octogen shapped drive head with a Cotton Bud / Q-Tip and some rubbing alcholol and got a bit of dirt off, but that hasn't helped one bit.


Has anybody on here got any idea what the problem could be? I'll be gutted if my drive is knackered (which it sounds like it is!)


Thanks for any help you guys can throw my way.

Lee

[EDIT] - I've since cleaned the heads again to be on the safe side, and now it reads a disk or two, but all the rest that were working before now show up a continuous 'BOOT ERROR' messages, whilst the drive is clearing reading the disk. I have no clue what's going on.

Edited by freemonk, Fri Nov 11, 2011 11:02 AM.

[Kylev]

freemonk,

It sounds like the drive timing may have come out of adjustment. If you have a copy of Dos 2.6f (or any other dos with a drive timing option), try booting this dos and checking the drive speed. It should read 288 rpm. If it reads something else, this can be adjusted via a pot on the drive board. It will have to defer to the hardware gurus on this forum to give you the specifics. I haven't done this adjustment in over 20 years.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Russ

[freemonk]

Thanks Kylev,

I tried to book up a Dos 3.0 disk, and at first it was reading it, then boot error...loading...boot error...loading...stopped. I then reset it, and now it's back to the slow 'BOOT ERROR' with the disk in or out.

[freemonk]

Hey Guys,

I'm on the brink of ordering another 1050 drive from Ebay, but before I do I just want to ask if anyone has anymore ideas on how to fix this issue.

I've left the top of the drive open to check what the drive is doing. It spinning the disk ok, and the drive head is moving freely up and down when switched on and off and when entering a disk. When I switch the power on to the Atari 800XL though, nothing happens. The drive head doesn't move, even though th disk is spinning. Just really slow slow 'BOOT ERROR' messages.

Any help would be great.

Edited by freemonk, Sun Nov 13, 2011 9:27 AM.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

Chances are you may get help if you wrote it all down in the right place.

This is the "Atari 5200 / 8-bit Programming" sub-forum, which has nothing to do with broken disk drives.

[npturton]

t could well be that the drive has lost track zero, I had a utility that you could use to adjust the track zero sensor, this spun the disk continuously until you managed to adjust the head track zero correctly, then the disk would read again

Just my 2 peneth !

[therealbountybob]

Could be the pressure pad has worn away causing it to grip the disks too hard? - try taking the pressure off by holding the drive lever a bit open (5'o clock position) and see if more disks boot up.

If so open the drive up and rough up the pad a little - or if it's worn down level with the plastic mount replace it with one from an old cassette and some double sided tape. Careful when removing the bits, it's fiddly. There is a detailed article on this in one of the later Page 6 magazines - found it! Issue #75 ("Don't Dump Your Drive" page 12)

Also found an article on 'Quietening your 1050' Page 6 - Issue #72

Hope this helps