Preventive Maintenance For The Cartridge Disk; General - Texas Instruments DS10 Installation And Operation Manual

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5. Using a lint-free cloth, lightly dampened with 93 percent isopropyl alcohol, wipe out the
well for the cartridge disk.
CAUTION
Do not touch the heads while cleaning the well for the cartridge disk.
6. Power up the blower by moving the ac breaker to ON. Let the blower run 20 minutes to
purge the air delivery system and provide thermal stabilization.
7. Resume normal operations.
4.5.3 PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE FOR THE CARTRIDGE DISK.
NOTE
Regular preventive maintenance (PM) procedures must be performed
on cartridge disks every six months. The fixed disk, because of its
sealed environment, does not require PM.
4.5.3.1 General. The cartridge disk is one of today's most advanced mass information storage
systems. However, this seemingly ideal system requires special care to maintain optimum perfor-
mance. Manufacturers originally considered disk packs and cartridge disks to be maintenance free.
However, they have come to realize that regular cleaning and inspection are necessary to prevent
costly system crashes, rerun time, and loss of valuable data. Regular PM is necessary on cartridge
disks to alleviate costly problems that can arise to degrade the quality of data storage, render the
cartridge disks unusable, or damage disk drives.
The need for PM arises in the following manner: Read/write heads fly over disk surfaces on an air
bearing of 20 to 135 microinches, depending on the type of disk pack. Contamination in the form of
dust, grease, metal filings, smoke particles, etc., build up on disk recording surfaces, decreasing the
separation between read/write heads and disk surfaces (see Figure 4-5).
CAUTION
Damaged or questionable-quality cartridge disks must never be in-
stalled in a disk drive. Disk drives must not be used without a clean
and serviceable air filter. To prevent damage to the cartridge disk,
the filter must be checked at least twice a year, and monthly in dusty
or nontemperature-controlled locations.
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Digital Systems Division