General Category > Lisa Troubleshooting and Repair

Lisa Video, ProFile power issue, NiCad Leak fixes, etc.

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rayarachelian:

--- Quote from: AlexTheCat123 on June 20, 2021, 11:03:57 am ---
--- Quote ---Maybe. Does NeoWidex tell you how many spared blocks there are?
--- End quote ---

It says that all 20 (I'm assuming that this in in hex) spares are in use and that there are 1D bad blocks on the disk. Would a low-level format potentially help or is this drive too far gone?

...

I know that everything on the I/O board is just fine because my Cameo/Aphid works perfectly with it.

--- End quote ---


Ok, perfect so the port is known good - that helps a lot. Sadly if the drive has that many bad blocks, you won't be able to install LOS - I think that's the max or near the max.
Since you have the Aphid, you could have installed BLU on the Aphid before you managed to fix the 6504 and 8T97 - then powered off the Aphid and attached the ProFile, but doesn't matter now. :)

So, yes, your only recourse is the low level format procedure. You'll need to burn the piggyback LLF EEPROM for the Z8 and then you can use  BLU to Low Level Format it.

But be ready in case it won't fix the issue as that's a whole lot of spared blocks and could indicate a lot of physical damage. Let's hope they're only bad because the power supply was a bit weak and it caused the overwrote the formatting markers, etc. In that, case the LLF will absolutely fix the drive. Keeping my fingers crossed for you.

Another thing you might do if the formatting fails is to attempt to replace the ST506 with whatever the 10MB drive is and I think it might need a new EEPROM for the Z8 for that, but that's a bigger project.

Once you're ready to do the LLF, make sure you have really good power, high recommend you plug both Lisa + ProFile in a big UPS just incase. Most likely nothing will go wrong, but you'll want to make sure power is nice and clean and no brownout caused by an HVAC or whatever ruins your day.

AlexTheCat123:
I'll go ahead and try a low-level format, but there's one problem: I don't have one of the special ROMless Z8s and I can't seem to find any on eBay. @Stepleton, I saw in a previous thread that you had several of these chips that you were spreading around the Lisa community. Do you still have any of these left and if so, how much do they cost?

stepleton:
Hello, the chips are free as long as they circulate around the community from person to person. So far I've only sent out one of them, and I have several more that I'd be very happy to distribute via post. The only hang-ups these days are that (a) shipping is from the UK so it could take a while unless you live nearby (b) thanks to the new, improved Delta COVID variant and the UK's vaccination scheduling, I'll be aiming to stay out of post offices for about another month or so. There is the option of at-home pickup so that might not matter so much. Feel free to shoot me a PM with your address, and we can at least get the ball rolling.

AlexTheCat123:
Update: The ROMless Z8 that @Stepleton kindly sent me just arrived in the mail and a low-level format cleared up all of the ProFile issues that I was having! The drive now works perfectly and doesn't seem to have any defects at all!

compu_85:

--- Quote from: patrick on May 31, 2021, 05:12:52 am ---Have you checked the reset signal on the CPU board? Sometimes capacitor C8 gets leaky and the NE556 will stick low.

--- End quote ---

As always, Patrick's hints point in the right direction. My 2/10 had started being "lazy" when turning on, having to run for a minute or so before it would reset. Changing C8 on the cpu board solved the problem.

-J

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