User avatar
mscdex

Posted Thu Sep 01, 2022 11:22 pm

Recently I came into possession of an A1010 and the person who gave me it to me told me they had dropped it so they weren't sure if it was working anymore (they have no way to test it).

Luckily the case mostly survived except for a few minor cracks on the case. However I noticed there was something loose inside. Upon opening the case I noticed what appears to be the metal cover that originally went on top of the read/write head (and looked like it was originally glued). There was also a very small and thin torsion spring.

I continued to disassemble the drive to do normal cleaning and further inspection to see if there was any more damage. As far as I can tell nothing else seemed out of the ordinary.

Plugging the drive in to my A1000, it seems to mostly function properly (e.g. light comes on/off when expected, it detects inserted disks just fine, etc.) except when it comes reading and writing disks. What I discovered though is that it appears to be a problem with the tension on the head assembly. If I gently just rest my finger on the top of the head assembly and insert a known good disk, the drive actually reads it just fine. If I take my finger off, it's "unreadable" and trying to do a quick format results in "seek failure."

So at this point I'm not entirely sure how to fix this. That little torsion spring I found in there doesn't seem to have any obvious place for reattaching that I could see, I figured maybe (before it had been dropped) it had somehow been exerting additional force on the head to allow it to read/write disks properly. The drive itself is a Newtronics drive with the model name starting with a D (I can't remember offhand and the drive is already reassembled currently), which I couldn't find pictures of anywhere online.

Any ideas on what I might be able to do to get the drive working again?

User avatar
Christian

Posted Thu Sep 22, 2022 5:31 pm

The Newtronics D357/D357A drives are all failing. Supposedly due to corroding read/write heads. Typically one side fails first (can be checked with SD / SuperDuper copy program), a few months or years the other read/write head fails, too.

It’s an issue in the synthesizer community as apparently quite a few synthesizers from different manufacturers used these drives.

Of course since yours still reads/writes with pressure, you may only have a mechanical failure. I’ll dig up my D357(A) and take some photos of the upper read/write head assembly.

User avatar
Intothewonderful

Posted Fri Sep 30, 2022 9:18 pm

Have you done a search on the interrnet for some ideas. It does sound like the tension on the head is not right. Have a look at this link, it has photo's and some advice.
https://oldcrap.org/2019/10/06/amiga-1010-fdd/

User avatar
mscdex

Posted Fri Sep 30, 2022 9:28 pm

Intothewonderful wrote:
Fri Sep 30, 2022 9:18 pm
Have you done a search on the interrnet for some ideas. It does sound like the tension on the head is not right. Have a look at this link, it has photo's and some advice.
https://oldcrap.org/2019/10/06/amiga-1010-fdd/
I've seen that site already, so I know the metal plate goes on top of the head as shown in the photos, but the small, thin spring I found isn't to be seen anywhere in those photos which is what really puzzled me. I'm also a bit skeptical that the weight of that thin piece of metal will be enough. Nonetheless, I will attempt reinstalling it soon with some double-sided tape and see if a miracle can happen.





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