Atari 1050 Loads to Title Screens Only

[+sixersfan105]

I recently acquired two Atari 1050 disk drives. One works as it should. The other is exhibiting odd behavior, in that it loads (some) games immediately to the title screen, but then does nothing further after that. It seems like it's grinding and doing its thing, but I can never get past the title screen. Other known-working games don't load anything at all. Of note, on this drive that isn't working right, I don't hearing any "whirring" at all during the process of reading a disk - only grinding. The working drive does both whirring and grinding when tested separately. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Mclaneinc]

Sounds like it needs TLC, a touch of isopropylene alcohol (spelling probably wrong) on a cotton bud and clean that head, gently but a good clean..

 

Clean the rails the head runs down on and lubricate after, a bit of grease will do but take care not to get it on anything else.

 

It thinks it pure luck you get the title screen as its usually the first thing loaded after the loader...

 

Grinding is it hitting what it thinks are bad sectors but it could be the dirty head hence the need to clean, if it still does that then there's a chance the disk used is bad but if it works on other drives then that isn't the case.

 

There's shed loads of tutorialss re cleaning with pics etc on here, probably in the slightly wrongly names newbie sticky forum on the 1st page..

Edited June 17, 2019 by Mclaneinc

[+sixersfan105]

Ok great, thanks. I'll try my luck at giving it a good, gentle clean.

[_The Doctor__]

clean heads, verify and adjust speed, if the drive is happy modded or similar, set unhappy or mod off modes.

[+Nezgar]

"Grinding" (head seeking) with no "whirring" (disk rotation) sounds to me like maybe the drive belt has broken or fallen off, so it may not be spinning the disk at all. Open it up and check under the drive mechanism for it.

[_The Doctor__]

55 minutes ago, Nezgar said:

"Grinding" (head seeking) with no "whirring" (disk rotation) sounds to me like maybe the drive belt has broken or fallen off, so it may not be spinning the disk at all. Open it up and check under the drive mechanism for it.

He mentioned it made it to the title screen, no belt would mean no title screen, unless he's mistaking the self test, memo pad, or Atari Rainbow as the title screen. I certainly hope one would not consider the Ready prompt a title screen.

[+sixersfan105]

11 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

He mentioned it made it to the title screen, no belt would mean no title screen, unless he's mistaking the self test, memo pad, or Atari Rainbow as the title screen. I certainly hope one would not consider the Ready prompt a title screen.

Right, the title screen of a handful of games loaded right up without issue, including Mission and Serpentine. Gotta figure the drive belt is intact if I'm able to get that far. It just stalls from there, giving me the audible successive beeps as if it's trying to locate DOS or something, but it's all built-in to the disk, of course, since it's a game. Note that these disks are known working in another 1050, so it's definitely the drive that is at issue.

 

Not sure if this helps or not but it was about as close to a new in box purchase as you can have without being new in box (the sides of the outer box were opened but the styrofoam was not).

[_The Doctor__]

I'd try to check the drives rpm, and make sure it's not a us doubler, happy or other enhanced drive.

If it doesn't show 288, it needs to be adjusted, copy protected software is timing sensitive.