🛠️ In this video, I tackle the repair of a seriously problematic Commodore 3040 disk drive that earned its nickname “Disk Drive From Hell” through a tortuous diagnostic and repair journey.

💡 Join me as I get my hands dirty with some serious troubleshooting.

What’s in the video:

  • 📚 Brief overview of Commodore’s early disk drive lineup
  • 🧩 Overview of the 3040’s architecture and components
  • 🔍 Step-by-step diagnosis of multiple failures
  • 🔎 Using my new 2040/3040/4040 diagnostics ROM
  • 💾 Replacing a failed 2114 static RAM chip
  • 🔌 Replacing out a dead 5632 RIOT chip
  • 💻 Installing a replacement ROM
  • 😱 How I accidentally shorted the address and data buses together
  • 🛠️ Repairing self-inflicted damage to two 74LS157 chips
  • 🎉 When it finally boots and runs

This repair used my new diagnostic ROM that I developed specifically for these vintage Commodore IEEE drives. If you’re working on similar drives, check it out here:

📂 GitHub repo: https://github.com/piersfinlayson/cbm-ieee-disk-diag-rom

💾 Stay tuned for a follow-up episode where I’ll service the actual drive mechanisms to get this big boy fully operational, and me tackling my other IEEE-488 drives.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
00:10 Drive history
07:32 Overall architecture
11:30 Initial power-on tests
14:54 More detailed troubleshooting
22:54 The plot thickens
31:31 Using the diagnostics ROM
49:47 It verks!
51:57 Final tally
53:14 Wrap-up

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