Unreliable microdrives

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mselkin
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Unreliable microdrives

Post by mselkin »

Hi everyone,

I am wondering if those of you who have "fixed up" your QL's and have working, good condition microdrives could please comment/give an honest report of your experience. I have set up two late issue QL's and selected the best I can find/working microdrives to pair with them. I am using excellent condition cartridges purchased from a member of this forum. Despite all this, I am experiencing a very low success rate. Often the drive will be able to read the cart directory and read the boot file but then fail to load the main program. Often formatting will fail but not always.

I fully understand that we are dealing with 40 year old hardware but I'm asking out of genuine interest:

- when reading this forum, it seems many of you are realizing a better reliability than I am, is that true or are you more tolerant of the failures
- was the hardware more reliable back in the day and this is simply the result of aging components?
- are any of you using a different voltage regulator? I am using Tetroid's excellent voltage regulator replacement - could that be adding noise (I have read elsewhere that it might)
- would changing the capacitors of the drives improve things, or os that only to get a non-working drive working again?

Any comments would be interesting/appreciated.


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tofro
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Re: Unreliable microdrives

Post by tofro »

Long-time QL users like me (and, I presume, a lot of other old-timers in this forum) have abandoned microdrives long ago - Most people seem to have changed to floppy, CF or SD card storage solutions if they stayed with the original black box and did not change to alternatives like the Atari ST-QL or Miracle QXL card (which were both quite a thing, at least in Germany - I used to have both and still regret selling my MegaST with QL emulator and hard disk in the late 90ies).

While my microdrives (I used to have only Samsung-made QLs) from - probably rose-tinted - memory used to work pretty reliably, I think I have stopped using them for serious work about half a year after I had my QLs and worked with floppy disks for a very long time. The cartridges were just too expensive and too hard to come by in Europe mainland. Also, filling 640 or 896k of memory from 100k storage media appears a bit silly.


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NormanDunbar
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Re: Unreliable microdrives

Post by NormanDunbar »

My original QL was a JM and had a faulty drive 2. I had it replaced under warranty with a JS, lucky me. That one served me well for numerous years with no mdv problems at all.

In addition, I never had any problems with my Spectrum's microdrives either.

Maybe I was lucky! :D

Cheers,
Norm.


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Chr$
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Re: Unreliable microdrives

Post by Chr$ »

Out of about 150 original software mdv's that I've dumped images of (after re-felting them) I think the success rate is around 85-90% overall (i.e. recovered working software from them, occasionally with the odd non critical bad sector). I have a feeling that their storage environment over the last 30+ years plays a major role. I'm lucky with my Samsung QL drives. mdv1_ has always been rock solid and I've put it through a lot of use in the last couple of years. mdv2_ is usually quite usable.

I have a switching regulator in my QL, with heatsink removed, and that doesn't seem to cause any issues.


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mselkin
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Re: Unreliable microdrives

Post by mselkin »

Thank you everyone for your comments.

I too have the new add ons (vDrive, vMap, CF card, floppy drives). I enjoy vDrive the most because I can use software hardcoded for mdv1_ and 2_.
I was only asking because I also enjoy using the original microdrives, for nostalgia sake.
I'll keep an eye out for Samsung drives as those seem to be more reliable (based on your comments).

How would I know if a QL contains Samsung drives, if I see one for sale on eBay?


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dex
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Re: Unreliable microdrives

Post by dex »

How would I know if a QL contains Samsung drives, if I see one for sale on eBay?
Then look for a german QL.


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Re: Unreliable microdrives

Post by Martin_Head »

The motors used in the Microdrive look very much like the motors used in audio cassette decks. I've known these motors suffer from wow and flutter as they get old.

I don't know if Microdrive motors suffer from the same problem. I think you would need some kind of strobe to test them. I don't know if anyone has tried this.


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NormanDunbar
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Re: Unreliable microdrives

Post by NormanDunbar »

Brane2 wrote: Come on. Every tape degrades with use. You had NEVER seen mdv fail on you ?
How often and how much had you used those things ?

Even floppies that have been _much_ more sturdy have been known to fail from time to time.
Correct. I never had a cartridge fail. I used mdv exclusively for a good few years as I couldn't afford to buy floppies. I had a limited number of cartridges as they were expensive to buy. I had a box of about 30 cartridges some were originals, others backups and others working.

I reformatted regularly and any that showed sudden gain or loss of sectors were deemed to be getting on for unreliable.

I eventually got a Trump Card and two floppies. No problems with those either, they were faster than I was used to and had much more storage.

Sadly I recently discovered that out of about 200 floppies, originals and backups, only 12 are still usable -- the Digital Precision Collection. The rest are toast! Everything I didn't have on my hard drive is gone forever.

CheerS.


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NormanDunbar
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Re: Unreliable microdrives

Post by NormanDunbar »

Nope. Long gone to the disc box in the sky.

Most were completely siezed up, wouldn't turn in the drive, or out of it either, almost like they'd been glued. :(

Cheers,
Norm.


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