Chances of the drive still working:
Slim to none.
I'm not dropping $200 just for that.
The cleaning components by themselves might be interesting, but with the DOA rate of "new" drives that others have reported here, you are probably right.
Upon what data do you base these guesses? I was sysadmin for a lab with a dozen cubes (and other cool NeXT stuff) over several years at a university and the leader of the NeXT users group there as well with dozens more cubes. I'm unaware of any DOA cube optical drives; in fact, the NEXT stuff was in general very reliable. The problems were always caused by dust was sucked into the early drives because of the fan direction on early cubes and the lack of a dust filter (later offered by NeXT).
Have you specifically experienced a DOA from a new, sealed OD unit? A friend that purchased a "sister" unit from the same supplier had no problems with his unit when opened several years ago.
Cheers,
-Nathan
I had a box of new drives... one worked, but all the others were DOA. The one that worked, only worked once reliably.
From what I've seen there are problems with dry joints and unreliably motors (though I haven't actually try repairing those drives yet).
I can see you've been a prolific contributor to discussions on NeXT hardware. I saw your posts regarding the Canon L10130 in a used cube and another one in which you mention a group of used cubes from a university. Was any of your experience with new, sealed NeXT/Canon OD units?
Cheers,
-Nathan
Yes, I had a box of new, sealed drives and the failure rate was almost 100%. This is a few years ago, so I would imagine things haven't got any better :)
That said, having a new, sealed drive is a great place to start from. Even if it fails, you can at least eliminate some causes of failure, like overheating, dust etc. As I said, from what I saw then, it was likely dry/old solder joints, and unreliable motors were the main problems (I think that's true in general), so there's a very good chance that even if the drive has failed, reflowing the solder, checking the head movement, and checking the motor would be enough to get things working. Even on older, failed drives, I've had success.
FWIW. I think the price is OK. The cleaning kits are interesting, and getting a new sealed drive is still a great way to try and get a working drive.
If anyone has a service manual for these drives, I'd be *really* interested!
Quote from: "nfjanette"Was any of your experience with new, sealed NeXT/Canon OD units?
Cheers,
-Nathan
I had 3 sealed units (from Ron Frohberg) and none of them worked.
Does anyone still have a working OD unit? I have some OD media I would like to image. I'm happy to travel.
Tomaz
I still need an OD as well as media.
I have a working MO unit. If you want me to image the media, PM me and we can organise things.