The felt is on a plastic arm, but that arm is lifted by a bit of sheet metal to let the disk in and out.
I think what he meant was it's possible for that metal to be bent and keep the felt lifted, perhaps only a little, even when the disk is inserted and the door closed, preventing the felt from pressing the disk to the read/write head. On Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 2:44 PM Francois Gurin <franc...@gurin.org> wrote: > > Thanks for the advice! I did some tinkering and the TPDD2 still reports > an I/O error or Communications error when trying to format (depending on > DOS), you can see it homes and seems to step through each sector. The > felt pad on the drive seems to be on a plastic arm, not a metal one. > It seems to be making decent contact with the disk from a quick visual. > > I did notice the low battery led wasn't flashing and seems to have broken > off the solder points. I haven't had a chance to fix this yet, but can't > imagine it's related. > > > > > On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 1:57 PM Jeffrey Birt <bir...@soigeneris.com> wrote: > >> In addition to what Josh said you can look for the low battery LED to >> very briefly flash when you turn it ON (or OFF, can’t remember which just >> now). This is a sign that the power supply is putting out 5V and it is >> getting to the control board. >> >> >> >> The connector from the battery compartment/ext. power jack it a pain to >> snap in place and may have popped loose. >> >> >> >> Worse case would be something popped loose from the power supply. I >> worked on one last week that had a battery leak in its past which did a >> number on the power supply board. A board in that shape could have a >> component knocked loose from a fall. The video for that repair will be out >> this Saturday in fact. >> >> >> >> Good luck let us know if you get it or if you need help. >> >> >> >> Jeff Birt >> >> >> >> >> >> *From:* M100 <m100-boun...@lists.bitchin100.com> *On Behalf Of *Josh >> Malone >> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 7, 2020 11:45 AM >> *To:* m...@bitchin100.com >> *Subject:* Re: [M100] TPDD2 help >> >> >> >> Most of the PDD design I think is pretty robust - physically at least. >> Things I would check off the top of my head: >> >> >> >> - Is the belt still in place? >> >> - Does it still power up (PSU board has connector that could shift loose) >> >> - Does disk still insert / eject smoothly? >> >> >> >> One non-obvious thing I've seen on a couple of PDDs now is this: There >> is a metal tab on the top of the frame that lifts the felt pressure-pad off >> the disk cookie during eject. This tab was physically bent on 2 of the >> drives I've seen, preventing the felt from making contact. The result was >> that the cookie was not pressed firmly against the drive head and the disk >> was not read properly. Bending this tab is very touchy as the felt needs to >> raise up quickly enough to clear the disk shell on eject, but still lower >> fully to press the cookie to the head. >> >> >> >> Good luck! >> >> >> >> -Josh >> >> >> >> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 12:40 PM Francois Gurin <franc...@gurin.org> >> wrote: >> >> Reaching out to the list for advice and help. >> >> >> >> I recently replaced the belt on my TPDD2 and was in the process of >> writing to a test disk when the drive fell a few feet onto the carpeted >> floor. There's no obvious physical damage, but as you can expect it's no >> longer able to read or write to disks. I'm going to guess the head is >> physically out of alignment, but I haven't a clue where to start. >> >> >> >> Any ideas? >> >> >> >> If not, anyone interested in taking a look? >> >> >> >> --FG >> >>
