Test and try: Five (probably broken) hard cards #autopsy

These hard drives on a stick .. err card ... are notoriously unreliable. I found five in a box of stuff, is it possible any of these work?

-- Info

0:00 Intro
8:55 Testing all the cards
1:17:34 Autopsy of the Western Digital Filecard

Plus Hardcard 20
Plus Hardcard 40
Mountain 20mb Drivecard
Western Digital Filecard
Quantum Hardcard EZ 85

-- Video Links

Adrian's Digital Basement Merch store:

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Adrian's Digital Basement (Main Channel)

My GitHub repository:

-- Tools

Deoxit D5:

O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)

Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:

Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:

Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:

Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:

TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)

TS100 Soldering Iron:

EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:

DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:

Magnetic Screw Holder:

Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)

RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)

Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)

Heat Sinks:

Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)

--- Instructional videos

My video on damage-free chip removal:

--- Music

Intro music and other tracks by:
Nathan Divino
@itsnathandivino

[twocvbloke]

And that 1701(D) error, well, that's a Galaxy Class way to go, very :P

[wings]

Back when I bought my IBM PS/2 Model 30-286 the optional IBM HDD was reported to be slow as molasses. So I chose to buy the Plus Hardcard 40, which was the premium brand since it was the only card-type HDD that occupied a single expansion slot in width, whereas other vendors simply slapped a full-size drive onto a controller board and took up the space of two expansion slots. It worked beautifully. I later upgraded to the 105MB model, and never regretted the purchase.

[tommajor]

Hard Drive name: "Volume in drive C is ASSHOLE". :) Isn't this the motherboard that had the broken ISA connector? It looks like the connector you were using for the video card was separated at one end toward the edge of the motherboard. You moved the 1st video card to a different slot and it worked. Then you put in back the original slot and it didn't work again. I went back and looked again at the 16 bit ISA slot, fourth slot over and is definitely broke!

[digitalarchaeologist]

That is so bizarre, I've never seen a HD look remotely like that on the inside and I've pulled apart plenty in my time.

[garthhowe]

I worked in IT from the late 80's, and I don't recall any JVC hard drives. That was a very unique drive design for sure.

[timb]

very interesting. You're right that the stiction is a sign that the drive is on its way out. I remember a series of Quantum drives sold for the Mac (SCSI ones) that had a serious stiction problem and the issue showed up just a couple years later. It was then that I also learned about the percussive maintenance to temporarily resolve the issue. As long as ya kept them spinning all was good, but power off and cool down, and they'd stick again. As always - thanks for the entertainment on these relics!

[offrails]

Laplink 3 and the Direct Access menu software both bring back lots of memories - Dad installed the latter to make the system a bit more "childproof", until my three year old brother was able to figure out the passwords by watching him enter them. I've still got the parallel port cable we used to use with it stored away somewhere - it made it easy to transfer Doom WAD files for local deathmatches.

[adambaranek]

Not sure if anyone else mentioned it, but the HardCard vibrations are likely the cause of the Keyboard Controller IC popping out.

[rarbiart]

that JVC just looks like somebody tried to anticipate a CDrom drive.

[HardDriveGuruOfficial]

Midnight Rescue!!! I haven't thought about that game in ages. Such wonderful, wonderful memories!

[skershaw]

I've had the occasional MFM hard drive that refused to format when placed upside down ie. PCB up. The documentation (if available) said that they would only work upright or on either of their sides. Your Mountain drive didn't seem to mind, but others might.

[paulmurgatroyd]

20:20 that menu system looks very familiar, I think I had one exactly like it on a shareware cd.

[davidrobertson]

33:38 ERLL is Enhanced RLL and Spinrite's RLL or MFM test patterns work just fine. They put more bytes of data on drives than standard RLL and still use the 2, 7 RLL data encoding... this drive is essentially permanently "married" to the chipset on the board and can't even have parts swapped out because of "tuning" of the disk to the controller as manufactured.

[iflan]

What would be cool but entirely pointless, is to convert one of these to a flash drive. Not sure how it could be done but it would be awesome. Saw the slots on the second one he showed and just gave me the idea.

[brittman]

The mountain computer hard drive looks awfully like a miniscribe. That drive you have looks identical to the miniscribe I have in my Compaq Portable IIs

[ratdude]

My dad's old Tandy 1000 has a hard card in it. I think it's a WD one... haven't been powered on in 10 years, last time it was fickle.

[PierceAndjelkovic]

Seeing a modern replacement for a hard card with the new RISC-V Pico Pi would be pretty awesome to see.

[trekkie]

That JVC Hard Drive is very strange. Never seen anything like it…😮

[AmericanLocomotive]

Everything on that JVC drives screams crude. It really looks like a prototype drive that was pushed into production. All of those variable resistors/caps/inductors whatever they are, are going to drift over time and indicate problematic/inconsistent manufacturing. You can also see what appears to be a speed sensor on the main spindle (toothed wheel with the little vertical board under the platter) and read/write assembly - something I've never seen in any other drive. All of those various layers of boards, wires and other components would take a tremendous about of very expensive hand-assembly.

[AnthonyRBlacker]

Yes, as far as I know, ALL the Japanese manufacturers had their attempt at making hard drives.