Err. 22 on all disks besides Murasame: Disk or drive issue?

[boye]

Exactly what it says on the tin. All of my disks besides Murasame throw Err. 22 when trying to read them. I only have one functioning drive so I can't verify right off the bat if these disks work on another drive, and FWIW, all the busted disks have varying degrees of dark spots on the mylar.

[Stephen]

Exactly what it says on the tin. All of my disks besides Murasame throw Err. 22 when trying to read them. I only have one functioning drive so I can't verify right off the bat if these disks work on another drive, and FWIW, all the busted disks have varying degrees of dark spots on the mylar.

How many disks are you testing? Rationally, it's more likely that the one working disk (murasame) is out of calibration in a way which is comparable to your drive.

If I had to wager a guess, I would recommend revisiting the gear train and spindle hub alignment:

• Ensure the flywheel gear is keyed correctly
• And that the head-track gear is positioned with the "ear" (eccentric edge) drawing a horizontal line across the narrow part of the drive body.
• With these two pieces aligned as described, ensure the spindle hub is horizontal across the narrow part of the drive, with the "flat spot" facing the read-head.

If you still get error 22 then you can revisit your motor speed adjustment.

The variable speed motor is often described as drifting but I believe the reality is that new belt have different tension / stiffness when compared to the original OEM belt. This requires an offset in order to maintain the ideal speed on the spindle hub.

[boye]

I'm testing 4 disks in total, including Murasame, and also, I'm not familiar with the terms you're using for disk alignment, do you mind adding some photos or linking a guide?
Edit: I'm also planning to get another disk soon, so I'll test that to see if that disk is also good.

[Stephen]

I'm testing 4 disks in total, including Murasame, and also, I'm not familiar with the terms you're using for disk alignment, do you mind adding some photos or linking a guide?
Edit: I'm also planning to get another disk soon, so I'll test that to see if that disk is also good.

Inside the drive, once you remove the bottom panel and the interior PCB, you will see a train of gears. One of those gears has a black weight (flywheel gear) on them and it has an alignment key:

The alignment key is not visible in this photo, but it should be in the circular window on the metal frame when it's aligned. You can see the "ear" of the eccentric edge in this photo as well, bottom left. It's contacting a cylindrical guide.

In this photo you can see the spindle hub:

It's not necessary to follow the instructions in the image, as I found this on Google. However, it's a convenient starting point if you're not sure.

I'll be compiling instructions in the coming weeks. Taking good quality clear photos and marking them up, as well as writing the instructions will be somewhat time consuming. As a result, I don't have better descriptions readily available.

It may be more convenient to refer to this set up guide. I also offer calibration services in North America if you no longer want to do it yourself.

[boye]

Thank you for the clarification. I'll probably pick up some tested games in the near future to confirm if the drive is OK.

[Stephen]

If you are on the west coast and would like to mail your suspect disks to me I would be happy to test their alignment and return them to you.

[boye]

Sadly, because I am both on the East Coast, and due to certain circumstances that I'd rather not go into, I'm afraid I cannot mail you the disks.

[Mosdef]

I'm testing 4 disks in total, including Murasame, and also, I'm not familiar with the terms you're using for disk alignment, do you mind adding some photos or linking a guide?
Edit: I'm also planning to get another disk soon, so I'll test that to see if that disk is also good.

Inside the drive, once you remove the bottom panel and the interior PCB, you will see a train of gears. One of those gears has a black weight (flywheel gear) on them and it has an alignment key:

The alignment key is not visible in this photo, but it should be in the circular window on the metal frame when it's aligned. You can see the "ear" of the eccentric edge in this photo as well, bottom left. It's contacting a cylindrical guide.

In this photo you can see the spindle hub:

It's not necessary to follow the instructions in the image, as I found this on Google. However, it's a convenient starting point if you're not sure.

I'll be compiling instructions in the coming weeks. Taking good quality clear photos and marking them up, as well as writing the instructions will be somewhat time consuming. As a result, I don't have better descriptions readily available.

It may be more convenient to refer to this set up guide. I also offer calibration services in North America if you no longer want to do it yourself.

Hi Stephen, did you end up doing your instructions as mentioned in July last year? am I not looking hard enough?...A new fresh look at the drives would be absolutely fantastic, especially seeing your write up's so far on here have been absolutely valuable

[Stephen]

Hi Stephen, did you end up doing your instructions as mentioned in July last year?

"Coming weeks"... I guess that should have been "coming years". I've been putting off this specific documentation because taking photos and writing instructions will be really tricky; I may do a video instead. It's sort of information packed and doesn't take shortcuts.

All of that being said, I haven't forgotten the goal and consider it the final major piece of the instructions which I started (with possibly one more write-up which I know Pokun won't like).

[Mosdef]

Honestly Stephen not sure who Pokun is what I have been reading so far from your answers on here and on your tutorial on tinkerdifferent it's been a breath of fresh air with what you have been doing and I appreciate it and I'm sure many other do too!
A video would be a smashing idea because I think most of the videos out the are becoming very archaic, one I watched was interesting but I was so sea sick by the end of the tutorial due to holding his phone, going out of focus and going out of shot while working on his drive LOL... Keep up the good work and I am one of probably many who want to see a vid 

[Skawo]

Incidentally, one thing I feel would be nice to touch on are super early revision drives - ones without the alignment ear on the bracket. There is some fundamental difference with those, not limited to the lack of that extra bit of metal - in all 3 cases of testing such a drive, the usual 'modern' polypropylene belt replacements tend to fall off the white wheel, and you need to either get a regular black rubber belt, or slightly lower the brass motor pulley by popping the cap off and pushing on said pulley until it's as low as it'll go. And no, it's not just a case of the extra bit of metal "guarding" the belt from falling off - I tried to put a spare metal-ear bracket into such a drive, and the belts still kept falling off.

Could also feature a guide for repairing the actual power board. There are only about 5 components that can realistically go bad on it, and all are off-the-shelf components - the 2SB1009 transistor (which are still available), the AN1358 chip (which can be replaced with a modern MC1458 chip), the variable 5K potentiometer (which can be replaced with two regular resistors, around 2.5K, or just another 5K pot), the capacitors (haven't seen a drive with bad ones), and, finally, the two 2SC2021R transistors (have not seen these go bad, either - but theoretically, it's possible. Can still get replacements of those, but they're somewhat uncommon). There are also parts exclusive to the newer -04 and -05 board that can fail, but by doing the write mod, you can essentially just bypass them, so there's no need to worry about them.

The failure of the 2SB1009 transistor exhibits itself as the drive constantly spinning when plugged into power, or the drive moving extremely slowly, with the motor potentiometer not making any difference when adjusted.

The failure of the AN1358 chip exhibits itself as the drive randomly stopping and giving intermittent BATTERY ERROR and ERROR 22.

The failure of the potentiometer exhibits itself as the drive not spinning at all.

[Stephen]

There is some fundamental difference with those, not limited to the lack of that extra bit of metal - in all 3 cases of testing such a drive, the usual 'modern' polypropylene belt replacements tend to fall off the white wheel, and you need to either get a regular black rubber belt, or slightly lower the brass motor pulley by popping the cap off and pushing on said pulley until it's as low as it'll go. And no, it's not just a case of the extra bit of metal "guarding" the belt from falling off - I tried to put a spare metal-ear bracket into such a drive, and the belts still kept falling off.

I've repaired a handful of these without experiencing this issue. Sounds like it would be worth exploring more if you want to loan / trade your drive.

Could also feature a guide for repairing the actual power board. There are only about 5 components that can realistically go bad on it, and all are off-the-shelf components - the 2SB1009 transistor (which are still available), the AN1358 chip (which can be replaced with a modern MC1458 chip), the variable 5K potentiometer (which can be replaced with two regular resistors, around 2.5K, or just another 5K pot), the capacitors (haven't seen a drive with bad ones), and, finally, the two 2SC2021R transistors (have not seen these go bad, either - but theoretically, it's possible. Can still get replacements of those, but they're somewhat uncommon). There are also parts exclusive to the newer -04 and -05 board that can fail, but by doing the write mod, you can essentially just bypass them, so there's no need to worry about them.

I started making a USB-C replacement power board but I'm not sure if there's a lot of demand. I've repaired dozens of drives at this point and haven't yet experienced faults on the power board. That being said, I'm sure they do happen and documentation would be helpful.

The failure of the 2SB1009 transistor exhibits itself as the drive constantly spinning when plugged into power, or the drive moving extremely slowly, with the motor potentiometer not making any difference when adjusted.

I experienced something like this but it was specific to the drive. I haven't had the gumption to try swapping the control board but I'm confident it's a bad transistor (or even bad disk controller chip!).

The failure of the AN1358 chip exhibits itself as the drive randomly stopping and giving intermittent BATTERY ERROR and ERROR 22.

The failure of the potentiometer exhibits itself as the drive not spinning at all.

These are nice tips which I haven't read before!

[Skawo]

I have already done the "lower the pulley" thing on all of them I have, and now the belts stay on correctly. Besides, it'd probably get stuck in customs even if sent as a gift :s

Here's some of the posts I found when researching this, though, just for posterity
https://www.reddit.com/r/Famicom/comments/nn89bt/famicom_disk_system_belt_slipping_off/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Famicom/comments/s79bjl/comment/ht8vcvt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
https://www.reddit.com/r/Famicom/comments/prloz8/replacement_fds_belt_slips_off_the_wheel_any/

I've repaired dozens of drives at this point and haven't yet experienced faults on the power board. That being said, I'm sure they do happen and documentation would be helpful.

Yeah, it's rare, I've only run into this twice. Once out of my own fault, because I accidentally shorted something on the board by not being careful with the battery contacts, but once I actually got a drive that came with a faulty board.

It was a POWER-03, though, so maybe it's limited to those only, and also is why those seem to be somewhat rare.

That board just kept failing over and over on me. Replaced the transistor first, it loaded one or two games, and then it started doing the intermittent Error 22/Battery thing. So I replaced the AN chip, worked for a while, loaded like 20-30 games with it to test, but then the next day the potentiometer blew. After replacing that (and all the capacitors just in case they were behind this string of failure), it hasn't failed yet, but who knows for how long :v