1050 drive advice

[xrbrevin]

hi,

my 1050 drive will not read disks recorded in other drives

it is fine at reading the ones it has recorded itself though

can anyone advise what could need attention?

thanks in advance

[whaledriver]

That is a classic head alignment problem.  There is a 'Master alignment' disk used to align the heads so all drives write the tracks in the exact same position on the disk.  If the head gets out of alignment it can read it's own created disks but cant read other disks that are aligned properly.

 

So basically you need to get the drive re-aligned.  That will take an alignment disk that is hard to come by.  Someone here might have one that can help.

[xrbrevin]

thanks, although i believe the head alignment disk cannot be copied or recorded.

do you know if tuning involves moving the stepper motor or adjustment of components?

[BillC]

28 minutes ago, xrbrevin said:

thanks, although i believe the head alignment disk cannot be copied or recorded.

do you know if tuning involves moving the stepper motor or adjustment of components?

It would involve adjusting the band connecting the head to the stepper motor,  to do it properly requires an alignment disk and oscilloscope but there are other methods. The one below is a different mechanism, but should be possible to adapt the procedure to work with the 1050.

https://classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2010-06-28-alignment-tandon-m100.htm

 

I would recommend converting all disks currently readable by this drive to ATR before adjustment, as they will likely not be readable by it afterwards.

[xrbrevin]

cheers ill give it a go

the disks i made were just to test it, created from existing ATRs but i thanks for the concern 🙂

[TGB1718]

sure its not the Track 0 alignment, see if the sensor has come loose, you still need the alignment disk to set it correctly.

[xrbrevin]

the drive passes all the tests on the Atari 1050 diagnostic software so im pretty sure everything else is in order

[TGB1718]

Even if the track 0 sensor passes the test, it only means it is working, without an alignment disk you can't

tell if it's properly aligned

 

I recently had a failed track 0 sensor, I replaced it, but it wouldn't read disks other than those it formatted,

lucky for me I had a second drive and created a diag disk and used it to align the sensor, I know it's not

perfect, but at least it reads all my disks, even genuine purchaed copies of software, so can't be

that far out.

Edited December 13, 2019 by TGB1718
update

[xrbrevin]

hmmm, a false positive...?

it cant hurt to readjust the zero sensor from scratch. ill give it a go

[xrbrevin]

its sorted! it was a track zero issue - even though it passed the official test, i recalibrated it from scratch and now its reading as it should.

many thanks to all who assisted!

i now know that when using the diag disk, it is best to use the individual test rather than rely on the multi-sequence of tests.

panic over, drive is good 🙂