Non-spinning spindle on a Sony MPF920-E

Update your old 720k to a 1.44 drive etc.
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stween
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Re: Non-spinning spindle on a Sony MPF920-E

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rubber_jonnie wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 2:30 pm
stween wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 2:03 pm
Yeah, checked and rechecked. Continuity checks all seemed okay as far as I could gather. The third and fourth pins from the top form a pathway via the spindle board (i.e. if the pins are desoldered completely, there's continuity between those two anyway), but there was no continuity between any other pair of pins once soldered back in place.
Well that's disappointing!
I know! As I said, I don't have a pinout for that particular part of the drive to cross-reference against (and I didn't go too deep on looking). But I'm confident enough of my bad soldering that I think the root problem may be elsewhere. Or maybe it's age and wear: it's been in storage and shipped in the last six months since I used it full-time. When I tried it last week it was already intermittently not spinning, and that's part of why I decided to open it up in the first place.

It bothers me when I have to give up on an old device. But it turned into a nice little exploratory experience and a bit of solder practice on fiddly components, which is still pretty okay 8-)
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Re: Non-spinning spindle on a Sony MPF920-E

Post by rubber_jonnie »

stween wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 2:44 pm
rubber_jonnie wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 2:30 pm

Well that's disappointing!
I know! As I said, I don't have a pinout for that particular part of the drive to cross-reference against (and I didn't go too deep on looking). But I'm confident enough of my bad soldering that I think the root problem may be elsewhere. Or maybe it's age and wear: it's been in storage and shipped in the last six months since I used it full-time. When I tried it last week it was already intermittently not spinning, and that's part of why I decided to open it up in the first place.

It bothers me when I have to give up on an old device. But it turned into a nice little exploratory experience and a bit of solder practice on fiddly components, which is still pretty okay 8-)
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but if the overall experience has been useful, it's always worth it, even if you can't fix it in the end. Seems to me that FDDs are getting more and more failure prone, I have a dead ST big button floppy which is a real bind as I need it working for a machine. Not much you can do if it refuses to play. I think it has a bad head.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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