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Re: HP dual floppy drive ( 9122 or 9121) and hp 9153 Winchester included floppy drive repair

 

Hi Bill,
?
It depends on the problem(s) with the drives. They are all probably Sony drives, and a common failure in them is that the grease on the insert/eject mechanism solidifies so that the floppies will no longer "click" into place when inserted and are difficult to eject. This problem has a relatively easy solution that you could probably do yourself. It involves removing the floppy drive from the chassis, removing its metal cover, carefully cleaning off the old grease, and replacing it with a very light lubricant.
?
Another problem with these drives which is likely unrepairable is that the upper read-write head on double-sided drives can be torn off by improper insertion and removal of the floppy disk. It will be obvious once you remove the metal cover on the drive. If that is the problem you'll need either to find an identical replacement drive or go with an emulator as Anders has suggested.
?
Regards,
Stan
Re: 8643A Will not power-up

 

?that the power supply is on, even when the on-off button on the front panel is not pressed?
?
Only one of them, NFS40-7624 (single output 24VDC) - this is the one closest to the IEC receptacle, and IIRC the easiest to access.
?
If yours has the same power supplies as my unit, I have a list of caps (? ) that should really, really be replaced whether or not they 'test good' - mostly RIFA and LXF series, both with a sinister reputation. I wouldn't bother replacing all the tantalums as that is quite an undertaking, and only a few of them are in high-inrush areas.
Re: What kind of chip is this?

 

From functional/performance point of view it must be similar to the HP83036C:
It is quite small and low loss, still directive. Anybody knows what's inside this?
?
Tom
Re: What kind of chip is this?

 

From the levels in the block diagram I suspect that the device has at most 1dB loss, thus no passive bridge circuit. So, I guess it is basically a rectifier. It could be a coupler, but for the 10MHz-1GHz bandwidth it would require quite some ferrite volume, which I cannot imagine in the small chip.
I'll do some measurements as soon as I get at it again...
?
Tom
Re: Test Set Program Development Tool DEV_PL on 3.5" floppy

 

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Indeed Spinrite is a disc scanning and (where physically possible, that is, the disk is not beyond use due to physical damage to it's surface etc) an error recovery tool.? (I have my own licenced copies of 6.0 and now 6.1)

It is OS/data content/Format agnostic, it can happily scan a LIF format disk and do it's work, just as well as with any other OS's file system, as it only works on tracks and sectors.? The content and format of the actual data in the sectors is not important.? (I.e.? If the hardware can read it, it can be tested.)

It reads and checks for errors using the established, CRC algorithms and so on, plus the controllers own status flags.

If it finds an error, it tries repositioning the heads, re-approaching from either side of the track to see if there is a better read to be had.? Many drives actually enable the read, while the heads are still settling on-track, so approaching from one side or the other, can make a major difference.

As floppy disk/heads are in full contact (unlike hard drives) that can also physically move contamination around, sometimes making things worse, sometimes getting a good read.

I always run a head cleaning task before and after working with a floppy disk.

Once a sector has been read successfully (if in repair mode) it will be rewritten, and checked that is good too..

In the past day job, I used it to "recover" a couple of HP instrument created floppy disks with 100% success, one was (as it turned out) in LIF format, the other was DOS.

(I even recovered an early iPod drive, after extracting the drive and using an adapter.? The family who owned it were happy and amazed, having been previously told by an Apple store, they are unrepairable.)

It can also test and "refresh" SSD's too, as they can slow down with use.? (Windows machines in particular!)? Just do a run on Level 2, it forces the drives own logic to do most of the job.? Then re-writes the recovered data, that will end up physically somewhere else in the SSD memory array, but that has no access speed penalty, unlike a moving head hard drive.

As above, I have my own licenced copies of 6.0 and 6.1, 6.1 has lost the floppy testing ability, but 6.0 still has it.? Steve Gibson (it's author) has said, that 5.x versions are best for floppy drives, but didn't elaborate why.

6.1 is **MUCH** faster when testing hard drives, any licenced owner of 6.0 can apply and get a free update to 6.1

Yes, if you have to buy it, it costs, but for under $100 US, the abilities it gives you to check and often recover troublesome hard drives and floppy media (with 6.0 or earlier) is well worth it.

I wish we had something like it when I was working on the old 14" moving head multi-platter drives "back in the day" (late 70's)? It would likely have mitigated the need to replace a troublesome platter that had developed a bad spot.? (Have to say, that was some of the most satisfying work I've ever been involved in.? The more care you took cleaning and setting a drive up after a platter or head change, the performance measurably improved.? Fun times!)

? for more info on Spinrite.

It has got me out of a hole on a couple of occasions, both with earlier Windows machine after a power cut, and more recently on a Linux PC, that also suffered a sudden power outage while accessing the main drive.? (My fault that was, I pulled the wrong plug, while the laptop battery was not present.)? That did take a while with 6.0 on an 80% full 500G drive, but it all came back to life as if nothing had happened. ? (Even GRUB was upset after that unexpected power issue.)

Mr Gibson is also "the explainer in chief" for the "security now" podcast.?? Find that at? ?? Also well worth following for anyone involved in anything IT related, at whatever level, professionally, or just helping friends and family stay safe.

Regards to All.

Dave G8KBV.
Re: HP dual floppy drive ( 9122 or 9121) and hp 9153 Winchester included floppy drive repair

 

Unless you want to stay true to the old stuff, then an alternative is to use an emulator such as HPDrive or HPDisk if the drives are flaky.
Re: 5345A electronic counter *restoration adventure*

 

Hi Wolfgang Schraml,

From one very happy HP 3545A owner, thank you very much for your detailed ?post.

Kind regards,
Terry ZL1NOW
Re: 5345A electronic counter *restoration adventure*

 


Hi?Wolfgang Schraml,

From one very happy HP 3545A owner, thank you very much for your detailed? post.



Kind regards,
Terry?



Kind regards,
Terry?



On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 8:17?AM Roy J. Tellason, Sr. via <roy=[email protected]> wrote:
On Wednesday 12 February 2025 05:09:28 pm RubenRubio via wrote:
> I think this manual is the worst I have ever seen.

Making good manuals is as much of an art as it is a skill.? I used to have a book on this subject,? wish I could find it.? One bit in the book that I can still remember vividly is a pair of facing pages,? with schematics on each of them.? One was really horribly drawn,? and resembles stuff that I've encountered,? and the other was the same equipment,? but with the schematic done right,? very clear and easy to follow...

--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Re: HP 8670B amplifier - does it ring a bell with anyone?

 

I'm pretty sure it's real. Does it show up in any catalogs of that era? There's many free PDF hp test equipment catalogs online.
HP 8670B amplifier - does it ring a bell with anyone?

 

Subject line says it all - expected coverage is 2-18 GHz but no other data can be found.
Re: Test Set Program Development Tool DEV_PL on 3.5" floppy

 

Sending it to someone that can do the work is probably the best idea.
?
My way of dealing with old diskettes is having old PCs running DOS and early windows and older linux that have 3.5, 5 1/4 and 8" drives. Takes up a little space but when you need to read or write something vintage, old hardware and software usually works. ?
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Also if you have a later piece of HP gear with a 3.5 disk drive that reads/writes both LIF and PC DOS formats, and has an Ethernet connection, you can often pop the LIF disk in the drive and read the contents back to a PC.? Later you may be able to format a PC DOS diskette in the drive and push the contents back to a disk that can be read in more modern or PC type hardware.
--
T. Gerbic
Central California
Re: Test Set Program Development Tool DEV_PL on 3.5" floppy

 

Second that. Off to McGuire with it.


Do NOT mess around with these disks with a Windows or Linux workstation.

--
With best regards
Tam HANNA

Enjoy electronics? Join 21k4 other followers by visiting the Crazy Electronics Lab at

Re: Test Set Program Development Tool DEV_PL on 3.5" floppy

 

Yup. Got it. Thanks.

DaveD
KC0WJN


On Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 15:41 Dave McGuire via <mcguire=[email protected]> wrote:
On 2/13/25 14:51, Dave Daniel via wrote:
> 1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of
> your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.

? ?No, this is NOT an option.? A USB-connected floppy drive does not
allow register-level access to the floppy controller; in fact the
required registers aren't even present.? Such access is generally
required to read or write floppy disks in other than "PC standard"
format, which these are not.

? ? ? ? ? -Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Re: What kind of chip is this?

 

Probably a custom designed part ?
Re: Test Set Program Development Tool DEV_PL on 3.5" floppy

 

To the best of my knowledge, this is the only time this particular piece of software has shown up. Now is not the time to be experimenting.

Spinrite is a surface scanning program, not a program that allows access to data in different filesystem types. We're not dealing with a PC disk that has errors here; this is software for an HP-9000 workstation, which has about as much in common with a PC as a sewing machine.

The correct thing to do here is to image the disk using a flux-transition imager or something like lifutils, TeleDisk, or ImageDisk.

-Dave

On 2/13/25 16:11, Paul Carrington via groups.io wrote:
I'd try and get hold of a parallel floppy.drive and if still no joy try and use an old.tool called spinrite on it back in the day I had success recovering data from floppy drives when all was lost. I've probably got an old dell kicking around with a 34pin ribbon based floppy in it.
On Thu, 13 Feb 2025, 20:41 Dave McGuire via groups.io <>, <mcguire@... <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 2/13/25 14:51, Dave Daniel via groups.io <> wrote:
> 1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of
> your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.
? ?No, this is NOT an option.? A USB-connected floppy drive does not
allow register-level access to the floppy controller; in fact the
required registers aren't even present.? Such access is generally
required to read or write floppy disks in other than "PC standard"
format, which these are not.
? ? ? ? ? -Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Re: Test Set Program Development Tool DEV_PL on 3.5" floppy

 

I'd try and get hold of a parallel floppy.drive and if still no joy try and use an old.tool called spinrite on it back in the day I had success recovering data from floppy drives when all was lost. I've probably got an old dell kicking around with a 34pin ribbon based floppy in it.


On Thu, 13 Feb 2025, 20:41 Dave McGuire via , <mcguire=[email protected]> wrote:
On 2/13/25 14:51, Dave Daniel via wrote:
> 1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of
> your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.

? ?No, this is NOT an option.? A USB-connected floppy drive does not
allow register-level access to the floppy controller; in fact the
required registers aren't even present.? Such access is generally
required to read or write floppy disks in other than "PC standard"
format, which these are not.

? ? ? ? ? -Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Re: Test Set Program Development Tool DEV_PL on 3.5" floppy

 

On 2/13/25 14:51, Dave Daniel via groups.io wrote:
1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.
No, this is NOT an option. A USB-connected floppy drive does not allow register-level access to the floppy controller; in fact the required registers aren't even present. Such access is generally required to read or write floppy disks in other than "PC standard" format, which these are not.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Re: E5071C Port Coupler Issue?

 

For future reference if anyone is interested, the part that was bad causing the wavy response (S11, S22) on these units was a burnt out switch a little further down in the chain (1GC1-6234).? It actually makes sense as it was the one part with extra thermal connections to the top cover.? Presumably these units were left on 24/7 in the labs where they were used (probably for 5-10 years) and then got too hot and burnt out.? Unfortunately, it looks like they cost about $700 a pop on epay.? Interested on tips if anyone has a good source for a few parts (5-10).
Re: What kind of chip is this?

 

I looked up that HP83732A. Looks like only the rough info is included in the manual, but from the specs and block diagram it seems to be a very nice instrument. It covers the whole 1-20 GHz range with two fundamental YTOs and RF dividers and signal routing, so more or less direct synthesis with no multiplying or mixing needed. Likewise, the 0-1 GHz is made directly by dividing one of the YTOs rather than heterodyning down-conversion as I had assumed.
?
Also note in the leveling, the 1-20 GHz is taken care of by a single broadband directional coupler that includes a compensating diode detector. No such diode is shown in the 0-1 GHz detector, so probably the one in the coupler does compensation for both - presuming these items are well thermally coupled. The schematic symbol for low band is shown the same as the high band coupler, but we know that it must be a directional bridge or simple (non-directional) diode pickoff, since no evanescent-wave line coupler can reach the 1-10 MHz range in a practical size - especially not in that tiny hybrid module.
?
Anyway, it's very cool - I sure wouldn't mind having one.
?
Ed
Re: Test Set Program Development Tool DEV_PL on 3.5" floppy

 

¿ªÔÆÌåÓý

The disk is most likely in LIF format so your Windows machines won¡¯t recognize it. Best recommendation is to get it to Dave McGuire as he¡¯s volunteered to make it available to the public.?

Steve
WB0DBS


On Feb 13, 2025, at 1:51?PM, Dave Daniel via groups.io <kc0wjn@...> wrote:

?
Two things come to mind:

1. One can purchase USB-connected 3.5" floppy disk drives; if any of your XP boxes have USB ports, this is an option.

B. If you have access to a *UX box (Linux, Solaris, etc.) ISTR that there is a "raw" copy command that will copy a data source to a data destination byte-by-byte.



DaveD
KC0WJN


On Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 13:59 Jim via <teotwaki=[email protected]> wrote:
If I can find a way to copy the contents of the disk I would be glad to upload or share the program. It is mentioned in a number of HP documents such 9018-06438-3 on using HPIB. So far I have not succeeded at making a copy using a USB floppy drive on a Windows 11 machine. Windows claims the disk is unformatted. I did try the disk management diskmgmt.msc but no luck.
I do have a couple of older XP machines but they do not have floppy drives installed (just CD drives).
?
Is this worth pursuing? Suggestions?
?
Jim
?
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