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MiniScribe 8425
I pulled this disc drive out of a 286 machine that was going to be sold
to the antiquity shop five streets down from my place, My disc drive is dated back on 31 OCT 1989 - I think it is the oldest one I have by far. It is finished quite well, enclosed in a beautiful cover but MiniScribe used the weird hexagonal bolts as Seagate did with some of its disc drives - this made opening more difficult than I'd wanted but I finally managed to open the cover and as you could see in the picture, the mechanism resembles more with a floppy's. I should add here that MiniScribe was Seagate's principal competitor. As you can clearly see from the picture, on the top cover (behind the disc drive) there is the list of "AS SHIPPED DEFECT CRITERIA". It is full of factory-marked defects. Sector 0 is error-free, as a general rule. Also notice the weird color of the thin film platters -- it looks like oxide but it is clearly not. Finally, notice the big black silver and gold, external-mounted stepper motor. It moves the actuator in a very weird way using something that resembles to a part of an alligator clip. You could not miss the way the LED is mounted: it is inserted in a connector from which you can easily remove it. Also, if you turn the disc drive to see the components, you will not find SMD parts as Seagate used for the majority of disc drives but ordinary parts. CHARACTERISTICS: CAPACITY:
21,4Mb |
about 5 years ago. Unluckily, the disc drive was damaged and I think
I made things worse when I rotated the interrupter (there is a label
affixed to the drive saying: "DO NOT ROTATE INTERRUPTER"). I did this
because the disc drive wouldn't start (probably the heads were stuck
to the platters) - after rotating, let's say 3mm, the interrupter, the
disc drive powered on and did some never-ending tests (the stepper motor
was making an infernal noise and wouldn't stop). After about 2 minutes,
the drive self powered off and since then I couldn't power it back on.
RLL
disc drive. Same design may be found on Seagate ST-225 or other similar
disc drives. This disc drive has affixed the FACTORY REPAIRED label
which means that it was repaired at least one time before it arrived
to me. As like almost all MFM disc drives, this model has affixed the
defects list. As always, sector 0 is error-free.