Hi everybody,

I have an old fireball 1280 that is clicking, so i managed to find 2 donnors, the 3 drives have the same firmware revision (A6B.24K0). The two headstacks are clicking in the patient and are fine when they are back in the original drives.
What am i missing? Does anyone could give me a clue ?
Thank you all

Viktor

Firmware problem or PCB or surface damage. Need the data or fix the drive ?

You have about a zero percent chance of getting a fireball to initialize with donor heads. If the original heads have failed, you are extremely unlikely to ever see your data again.

agree with HEXED

I've been experiencing. Donnors when headswapped, click 4 times then spindle spin down and the drive never gets ready. When the heads are back in their original drive all is fine. PCB can be swapped with all three drives, So i think the problem is with the headstack. The preamp is the same chip for the three headstacks. Is that an alignement issue ?

Viktor

possible not the same preamp ic in the donors
so the other hard drive wont let them work.

do the ic match up on the headstacks ?????

That's what he previously wrote.
Viktdev, did I get it right that you confirmed that head swapping is not possible with these drives by swapping them between the two known-good donors? Too bad, keep us informed when you get beyond that point, I would have thought that such a transplantation is much easier on a 1 gig drive.

You did get it right

PCB can be swapped between the 3 drives
Headstacks have the *same* ic (mfg date is different but part nr is the same)
Heads cannot be swapped between the 2 donnors drives (clicking 4 times then spin down)
Viktor

It's not alignment problem but adaptives.

BlackST,
I assume you have a much deeper knowledge about the problem than just the cause.
What kind of adaptives are you referring to? This drive is so old I would think it is probably from the pre-PRML (weren't those Empire drives with 2GB the first Quantums to use PRML?) era, so the thresholds for the data separator would need to be matched to each head... or what's the reason?

I'll post or PM tomorrow evening - local time.

Are you talking about the adaptives stored in cp17?

This can be more things...
Like differend heads brand, some different value on the heads, or similar....
The best way is now the measure of the read channel, but this step needs oscilloscope or signal analyzer.

Janos

No.

Tough call. The only chance is you have to try many sets of heads to get a matching one. Whether it will be successful or not is sheer luck.

Those Maxtor D7xxX-6L and Quantum AS drives use adaptive formatting. I did one 4 years ago. I was successful at 32th head stack swap. Since then, I gave out head swap for those drive. Good lessons learned.

Perhaps BlackST had his "secret" way to make it work

Unless customer wants data 'at any cost', the point is exactly what meow stated. There are other ways with more sophisticated techniques but in any case it is likely a PITA.

head original and still good physically? case yes tries in a donor and is certain… (conclusion)

I try to help.

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I found one of the heads in the filter when opening the patient... I just wanted to be sure why with 2 potential donnors no headstacks were matching.
The harddrive is now in the trashcan
Thank you all for your answers.
Viktor

Always save pcb and the other parts... You'll never know.