Old IBM 40mb HDD – Electronic Issue – Looking for Advice

[pauloa...@gmail.com]

Hello everyone,

I have a rather old hard drive in for data recovery. At first glance, the issue appears to be electronic: the drive does not power up at all and shows absolutely no signs of life.

I’m currently looking for a suitable donor drive, but before proceeding I’d like to ask whether anyone here has experience working with this particular model.

I have to admit that I haven’t worked much with drives of this age, especially when it comes to their electronics. If I manage to obtain an identical donor PCB, does this model require any ROM, NVRAM, adaptive data, or other drive-specific component to be transferred from the original PCB to the donor board? Or would a matching PCB normally be sufficient?

Any technical information or experience with this model would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

[compos mentis]

Measure the resistance of fuse F2 (F25E) at the left hand side, below
the motor connector. I'm still trying to locate F1.

[compos mentis]

https://www.diyaudio.com/community/attachments/icp-n-f-pdf.533985/

ICP-F25, ROHM, Circuit Protector, 1A, 50V, marking F25

[compos mentis]

F1 is on the other side of the PCB (F25F, bottom right corner).

https://theretroweb.com/harddrives/237

https://theretroweb.com/storage/image/ibm-pcb-6787779cdbd86362195807.jpg

[pauloa...@gmail.com]

Hi Franc,

Incredible! The problem really was F1! I honestly owe you a beer for helping me out with this particular case. I managed to image the entire drive successfully. Amazingly, this is a drive from 1990 and it completed with not a single bad sector. Quite impressive after all these years. Case solved. Thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction, I really appreciate it.

Hopefully I’ll have the chance to return the favor someday!

Thanks again!