PC-3000 Forum

We have a 23 year old WD170AA PATA HDU that has one bad head (of 4) and some other reading issues, probably a result of contamination and media degradation.

We've got a partial read on the three good heads. I modified a crappy Chinese head comb to fit. However, I'm having difficulty finding a suitable donor, and the PC3K utility doesn't have some important features (e.g. can't change head map in RAM). It doesn't seem to like smart hot swaps, although there doesn't seem to be any adaptive info in ROM.

The patient drive has two platters, missing one in the middle, so the map is probably 0,1,4,5.

I bought a donor with DCM ASABLQFB0. It has 3 platters, and 5 heads, probably 0,1,2,3,4.

Exact donors seem scarce. I have some questions:

1. Are DCM characters 5 & 6 essential? Any others to get a match?

2. I have drives of greater capacities, e.g. 205AAs. Anyone had luck using heads from a different model?

Anything that I can learn to get this off of my bench would be MOST appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Here's a pic of the patient:

I wouldn't worry much about the DCM on this old of a model. Just curious did the donor you use have the "-**AFA* code in the part of the model number after the dash? That's an odd family(Millinium) that I've never actually worked on. If would guess as long as you get one that's got the AF in the code after the dash, your heads will match up. That's the actual family identifier code.

Thank you very much!!