🚀 go-pugleaf

steve@chama.unm.edu (Steve Jorgensen-S) writes:

> I am having some hard disk problems.  I have an Epson Equity I+
> XT compatable, with a miniscribe 3650 hard disk.  Now, this is
> my problem.  Tonight when I turned it on, instead of spinning up,
> the LED on the front of the drive flashed 4 (maybe 5) quick blinks
> of red, then one long blink, and finally two sets of 3 quick blinks.

It appears you may lose the boot track of the drive.  This is a common
problem with the 3650.  Here's something to do (keeping your data
intact is about a 15% chance):

Remove the printed circuit board from the drive, or at least free it
enough to get to the stepper motor.  On the shaft of the motor is a
metal 'flag' that rotates through a black plastic yoke.  The yoke
contains an optical sensor, the beam of which is broken by the flag
as the boot track and the heads come into alignment.  What has
happened is that the flag has moved slightly on the shaft, or that
something else has caused a misalignment.  Rotate the flag until it
comes up into the yoke and note where it is.  Slightly loosen the
set screw holding the flag and ever-so-slightly rotate it around the
shaft until it is about 1/3 through where the light beam would be
(the light source and the sensor can be seen by shining a light
into the yoke).  Tighten the screw firmly, replace the pc board and
try the drive.  This may take a half-dozen or so tries.  If you're
lucky, everything will align exactly where it should, and your data
will be intact, but this is not usually the case.  When you do get
the drive to come up, do a new low-level format, etc.  There's a
certain 'feel' to all of this, but keep at it.

> I am assuming this is some sort of error code, and unfortunately
> I don't have the manual for the drive.  So, could some kind soul with

This is not in the manual, and techs at Miniscribe don't want to
talk about it.  If all else fails, a hard drive repair shop and ~$150
should take care of it.  I've had to do this with two 3650's over the
past three years.