IBM XT 8086 tonearm scavengers alert

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Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

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Hello DIYers,
To all of you who, when invited by the NASA to help them out with now
obsolete 8086 processors, remembered their own personal computer resting in remote confinement of attic, cellar or garage, and who maybe even thought on responding to the invitation :
Apart from the processor there is another treasure aboard: the 10Mb harddisk drive, it contains a main bearing unit for the disks that has great refinement, and is particularly well suited for DIY tonearm projects.
Apart from the mere quality its virtues lie in the size of bearing and
flange which makes it accessible for low tech (DIY level) machining, and, of course, it costs close to nothing.
If you open the (most probably Seagate) unit you will set out on a trip in miniature mechanical wonderland, with numerous occasions for beatitude and amazement, be gentle on this tiny environment and leave hammers or such at home; a Torx key set and two flat screwdrivers are about all you will need.
The only part that is tricky is when it comes to separate the magnet cup from the bearing, but the insertion in the crevice of two flat screwdriver blades at opposite sides will make it pop off easily.
And there you have quality that is maybe best explained by the following:
* It's a pre-garbage era product.
* Generally mass production close tolerance items are hard to beat by small production series from audio technology.
* The engineers who were involved in harddisk design couldn't afford anything to go wrong, so they probably over engineered every aspect.
* Massive over-sampling nowadays allows for reading errors, this leads to less critical bearing tolerances than were needed then.
Less old versions (more Megabytes) may offer usefull dimensional aspects, but gradually lose on the quality.
Have fun,
Pascal

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Topic - IBM XT 8086 tonearm scavengers alert - ERAnut 13:48:30 05/27/02 (0)

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