[Coco] Burke & Burke Hard Disk controller

[Bill Pierce]

When I got the Coco system I have now (Dec 2011), it had a Burke & Burke dual drive system with 2 ST-225s.
(pics here, at the bottom of the page)
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/home



The original owner forgot to send me his bootdisk, so I had to put together a boot, download the B&B CocoXT manual, get the driver from the repo, and put together the descriptors.
Once I finally got the system to boot with the drivers, the HDs wouldn't spin up. According to the owner (and everyone else I talked to) the old MFMs need help sometimes spinning up. So as the org owner suggested, I rapped the corner of the drive case a couple of times with the heal of my hand and sure enough, the drives started spinning.... then the sparks started to fly and the smoke came out.
After further investigation, and the cover off., I found that apparently in shipping, a screw had become loose in the HD case from somewhere (never found the empty hole) and lodged itself in the power supply. My rapping on the case apparently made it settle into the wrong place and shorted the AC line in to something else and <POOF!>.... out came the smoke. We all know what that means
I found an old power supply (MFMs require waaaay more than a floppy) in an old IBM server case I had and I fudged it all back together.
The drives would spin up, but /h1 was making a parculiar noise and /h0 was sounding right.
I could read from /h0 but not from /h1. After about 15-20 minutes, /h0 would quit reading. If I let the system set for a few hours and try again, I would get the same. /h0 would give 15-20 mins service and /h1 wouldn't read. I spent the next 2 weeks getting the data off of /h0, a little at the time
I kept this going long enough to get all the data off of /h0 and onto vdsks through dw4. Then it all died.
Eventually I got curious and opened up /h1. The drive head on the top platter was broken off and the armature had cut a groove in the platter at LSN0. If I knew how, I would love to take the rest of the platters and have the remaining data extracted, but in checking the web, people want $2k-$4k for that service.
So at least I saved /h0. From what I found out from the orig owner, he was using /h1 as /dd and /h0 was his backup. It seems /h0 had been giving some speed trouble after it warmed up so he switched to /h1 as default. He had just recently backed up the main data to /h0, so I got most of what was possibly on /h1 (I hope)
The controller is now in my "Coco Stuff" box and the drives in my "Dead Coco Stuff" box.
My controller was the model shown in the ebay pic... just 2 metal plates sandwitching the board for a cover. Mine has the RTC, but not the CocoXT rom, though the socket is there for the rom. The org owner said he was going to get it later, but never got around to it.
 

Bill Pierce
"Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
 

My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
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