Hardware help on vintage IBM 5110 disk drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter sinoth
  • Start date Start date
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sinoth

Heya all, I apologize if this is the wrong group for vintage hardware,
but I couldn't find a better one. If there is a better group for this
please point me in the right direction :)

I have an ancient IBM 5110 complete with disk drive, picture here :
http://sinoth.net/img/5110.jpg
The problem is I can't get the disk drive to work. I have some old
5.25" disks that probably work, and also bought some 'new' ones that
shouldn't be corrupt and I can't get the beast to read the floppies.

I wouldn't be surprised if the disk drive no longer works -- it's been
stored in my grandma's burning hot attic for who knows how long... I
was shocked to find out the computer still works.

Anyhow, if anyone thinks they can help me troubleshoot this ancient
disk drive, I can provide more detailed info on what I've done and
exactly what happens. Thanks!
 
In message
Heya all, I apologize if this is the wrong group for vintage hardware,
but I couldn't find a better one. If there is a better group for this
please point me in the right direction :)

I have an ancient IBM 5110 complete with disk drive, picture here :
http://sinoth.net/img/5110.jpg
The problem is I can't get the disk drive to work. I have some old
5.25" disks that probably work, and also bought some 'new' ones that
shouldn't be corrupt and I can't get the beast to read the floppies.

I wouldn't be surprised if the disk drive no longer works -- it's been
stored in my grandma's burning hot attic for who knows how long... I
was shocked to find out the computer still works.

Anyhow, if anyone thinks they can help me troubleshoot this ancient
disk drive, I can provide more detailed info on what I've done and
exactly what happens. Thanks!
Click to expand...

What a splendid machine. Takes me back to my early days learning to use an
Olivetti P6060...

Probably a silly question, but have you cleaned the drive heads (assuming the
drives still spin)? My experience with floppy drives in a lab environment not
unlike your grandma's attic was that they almost always just stopped working
through lack of use -- presumably by accumulation of dust and/or oxide. Almost
invariably, these drives would then corrupt the first disk they saw unless I
cleaned them first, and I took to carrying a cleaning disk with me all the
time.

I may still have a 5.25" cleaning disk buried in my office somewhere, if it's
any use...

Phil
 
Ah, my bad! I haven't played with this machine for a while and forgot
some of the details. It is a 5114 disk unit and takes 8" floppies,
not 5.25". I pulled the beast out and took some pictures of it for
those of you who like computer porn:

The old and yellowed user manual:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_manual.jpg

These disks are huge!
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_disksize.jpg

The cable coming from the disk drive:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_connector.jpg

Where the disk drive plugs into the computer
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_connector2.jpg

The disk drive opened:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_open.jpg

Inside the disk drive, near the bottom:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_bottom.jpg

The actual floppy drive and motor
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_hotdrive.jpg

My grandpa must have been a hard worker :)
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_games.jpg


I have a number of disks that should be properly formatted and
working, but the drive doesn't want to read them. When I try to load
a disk I hear a *CHUNK* sound that I assume is the read head engaging,
and the computer always freezes or displays some garbage followed by
an "INTR 2 ERR". I can't find much information about this error.

To me it seems like either the disks are all damaged, the drive head
is dirty or misaligned, something is physically broken in the disk
drive, or the cable connecting the disk drive and computer is faulty.
If anyone can give me pointers on cleaning the disk drive itself or
the floppies, I'd much appreciate it.

I do have some new 8" disks but here is the kicker -- to format them,
I have to use a disk provided by IBM with customer support functions
on it such as disk initialize. The problem is this is one of the
ancient, attic-stored disks... if it is faulty, then I have no way of
formatting new disks. :(
 
sinoth said:
Ah, my bad! I haven't played with this machine for a while and forgot
some of the details. It is a 5114 disk unit and takes 8" floppies,
not 5.25". I pulled the beast out and took some pictures of it for
those of you who like computer porn:

The old and yellowed user manual:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_manual.jpg

These disks are huge!
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_disksize.jpg

The cable coming from the disk drive:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_connector.jpg

Where the disk drive plugs into the computer
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_connector2.jpg

The disk drive opened:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_open.jpg

Inside the disk drive, near the bottom:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_bottom.jpg

The actual floppy drive and motor
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_hotdrive.jpg

My grandpa must have been a hard worker :)
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_games.jpg


I have a number of disks that should be properly formatted and
working, but the drive doesn't want to read them. When I try to load
a disk I hear a *CHUNK* sound that I assume is the read head engaging,
and the computer always freezes or displays some garbage followed by
an "INTR 2 ERR". I can't find much information about this error.

To me it seems like either the disks are all damaged, the drive head
is dirty or misaligned, something is physically broken in the disk
drive, or the cable connecting the disk drive and computer is faulty.
If anyone can give me pointers on cleaning the disk drive itself or
the floppies, I'd much appreciate it.

I do have some new 8" disks but here is the kicker -- to format them,
I have to use a disk provided by IBM with customer support functions
on it such as disk initialize. The problem is this is one of the
ancient, attic-stored disks... if it is faulty, then I have no way of
formatting new disks. :(
Click to expand...

I don't remember the inside of that model but many drives of those days used
rubber belts between the drive and the spindle. They stretch and loose the
ability to properly drive things with age, let along being exposed to high
temperatures.

If lucky, yours will resemble an o-ring rather than a flat drive belt. Many
times I would pick up an o-ring of the right size at the local hardware
store and restore a drive to operation. Flat belts can still be had at
shops that fix older stuff like VCR's and record players, if you can locate
one.
 
I don't remember the inside of that model but many drives of those days used
rubber belts between the drive and the spindle.  They stretch and loosethe
ability to properly drive things with age, let along being exposed to high
temperatures.
Click to expand...

I've made two videos showing this drive in operation. The belts seem
fine and not too loose. The first video shows the drive powering on,
and shows that the disk is in fact spinning when inserted.

This second video shows what happens when I issue a "UTIL VOLID,D80"
command, which should be giving me the disk volume information. The
read head moves for a moment in and then immediately back out, and the
computer shows a "INTR 2 ERR".
 
In message
Ah, my bad! I haven't played with this machine for a while and forgot
some of the details. It is a 5114 disk unit and takes 8" floppies,
not 5.25". I pulled the beast out and took some pictures of it for
those of you who like computer porn:

The old and yellowed user manual:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_manual.jpg

These disks are huge!
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_disksize.jpg

The cable coming from the disk drive:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_connector.jpg

Where the disk drive plugs into the computer
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_connector2.jpg

The disk drive opened:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_open.jpg

Inside the disk drive, near the bottom:
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_bottom.jpg

The actual floppy drive and motor
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_hotdrive.jpg

My grandpa must have been a hard worker :)
http://sinoth.net/img/5110_games.jpg


I have a number of disks that should be properly formatted and
working, but the drive doesn't want to read them. When I try to load
a disk I hear a *CHUNK* sound that I assume is the read head engaging,
and the computer always freezes or displays some garbage followed by
an "INTR 2 ERR". I can't find much information about this error.

To me it seems like either the disks are all damaged, the drive head
is dirty or misaligned, something is physically broken in the disk
drive, or the cable connecting the disk drive and computer is faulty.
If anyone can give me pointers on cleaning the disk drive itself or
the floppies, I'd much appreciate it.

I do have some new 8" disks but here is the kicker -- to format them,
I have to use a disk provided by IBM with customer support functions
on it such as disk initialize. The problem is this is one of the
ancient, attic-stored disks... if it is faulty, then I have no way of
formatting new disks. :(
Click to expand...

Ah, the P6060 also used 8 inch floppies and as I recall, we used to have
to get the Olivetti engineer in from time to time to adjust the
alignment of the heads. Don't remember the exact symptoms as they went
out of alignment, but your error looks vaguely familiar. Eventually we
actually had the drive heads replaced as they were judged to be too worn
for further service...
 
sinoth said:
I've made two videos showing this drive in operation. The belts seem
fine and not too loose. The first video shows the drive powering on,
and shows that the disk is in fact spinning when inserted.

This second video shows what happens when I issue a "UTIL VOLID,D80"
command, which should be giving me the disk volume information. The
read head moves for a moment in and then immediately back out, and the
computer shows a "INTR 2 ERR".
Click to expand...

I agree that the problem is most likely either the drive or the media but I
have seen some of the old motherboards give the same error message if the
motherboard battery is low or dead. It's remote but with a bad battery the
CMOS may not maintain the info needed to properly identify/read the drive.
 
sinoth said:
.... snip ...

I have an ancient IBM 5110 complete with disk drive, picture here :
http://sinoth.net/img/5110.jpg
The problem is I can't get the disk drive to work. I have some old
5.25" disks that probably work, and also bought some 'new' ones that
shouldn't be corrupt and I can't get the beast to read the floppies.
Click to expand...

Also try alt.folklore.computers. You may well find some of the
designers there.
 
sinoth said:
Ah, my bad! I haven't played with this machine for a while and
forgot some of the details. It is a 5114 disk unit and takes 8"
floppies, not 5.25". I pulled the beast out and took some
pictures of it for those of you who like computer porn:
.... snip ...

I have a number of disks that should be properly formatted and
working, but the drive doesn't want to read them. When I try to
load a disk I hear a *CHUNK* sound that I assume is the read
head engaging, and the computer always freezes or displays some
garbage followed by an "INTR 2 ERR". I can't find much
information about this error.
Click to expand...

The disks are probably perfectly standard SSSD 8 inch, holding
about 240k Bytes in 128 byte sectors. Look up some of the original
CP/M manuals for further details. Don't keep trying to read the
old disks until you have the system properly set up, or you may
lose what is stored there.
 
Ah, my bad!  I haven't played with this machine for a while and forgot
some of the details.  It is a 5114 disk unit and takes 8" floppies,
not 5.25".  I pulled the beast out and took some pictures of it for
those of you who like computer porn:

The old and yellowed user manual:http://sinoth.net/img/5110_manual.jpg

These disks are huge!http://sinoth.net/img/5110_disksize.jpg

The cable coming from the disk drive:http://sinoth.net/img/5110_connector..jpg

Where the disk drive plugs into the computerhttp://sinoth.net/img/5110_connector2.jpg

The disk drive opened:http://sinoth.net/img/5110_open.jpg

Inside the disk drive, near the bottom:http://sinoth.net/img/5110_bottom.jpg

The actual floppy drive and motorhttp://sinoth.net/img/5110_hotdrive.jpg

My grandpa must have been a hard worker :)http://sinoth.net/img/5110_games.jpg

I have a number of disks that should be properly formatted and
working, but the drive doesn't want to read them.  When I try to load
a disk I hear a *CHUNK* sound that I assume is the read head engaging,
and the computer always freezes or displays some garbage followed by
an "INTR 2 ERR".  I can't find much information about this error.

To me it seems like either the disks are all damaged, the drive head
is dirty or misaligned, something is physically broken in the disk
drive, or the cable connecting the disk drive and computer is faulty.
If anyone can give me pointers on cleaning the disk drive itself or
the floppies, I'd much appreciate it.

I do have some new 8" disks but here is the kicker -- to format them,
I have to use a disk provided by IBM with customer support functions
on it such as disk initialize.  The problem is this is one of the
ancient, attic-stored disks... if it is faulty, then I have no way of
formatting new disks.  :(
Click to expand...

Woooow, you have GAMES for the 5110 !!!, that is soo cool, let's hope
you can get the diskdrive to work !, would it be possible to send you
some brand new 8 inch floppy's (bought them in a SEALED box !!) for
copies ?

Friendly greetings

Kevin
 
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