Hello!
Basically, this is a really, really short version of a long, aggravating story.
Got a FDS, seller promised it working once I replaced the belt.
Scraped gooey old belt off, cleaned surfaces good and installed new little black belt.
ERROR 22.
I have read all of the guides on famicomdisksystem.com about this error, seen all of Luke's advice on YT about it,
and have searched far and wide for help to no avail. We've tried "re-seating" the spindle hub (or whatever it's called) over 60 times.
We've "turned the gear until it clicks". We've looked at the little hole in the white gear through the steel. Blah, blah, blah.
I own only 2 FDS games, Kid Icarus and Metroid, niether of which will ever boot. This has been going on for days.
I'm starting to think that it just doesn't want to work. ;D
Anyway, I'm just a humble guy stuck in the midwest that wants to play some FDS games.
Anybody care to weigh in on this? I've had plenty of speculations, none really seemed to cure the issue.
I'm almost ready to just send it to some good soul for repair.
In return, I have a lot of console stuff, and I'd be happy to give you some if you want it. I'm otherwise broke.
Thanks for reading this-
PS: inb4 'cool story bro' LOL
NKG
Just so you know, nobody here will ever say "cool story bro" (until now. I guarantee the next post will say it)
Get in contact with Xious, a member here. He can fix it, or tell you how to.
;)
Just thought maybe I rambled too long.
This indeed is the short version though.
Thanks for your reply petik1!
(http://s9.postimage.org/5jxvdybof/81751531.jpg)
yea, send it to Xious.
This is what I do, that they are referencing: FDS Restoration (http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=5828.0).
Anything I did in trade would need to be either for something very obscure (for my personal collection),or items that I can easily flip. :bomb:
P.S. Nice image insert P.D.. :)
Quote from: Parodius Duh on December 06, 2011, 03:21:34 pm
(http://s9.postimage.org/5jxvdybof/81751531.jpg)
yea, send it to Xious.
Don't send him that bra unless it has a nice set of boobies to go with it and well 32AA they are tiny titties!
One thing i might suggest is see if you can get your hands on a different disk the ones you have might be dead. I'm also seriously considering sending him mine cause i have no clue where to start especially since i found random things that don't belong in there.
It's very likely nothing to do with the disks. Out of hundreds, I have a very short stack of disks that are bad, and all of them have a physical defect, such as a pin-hole or a dent in the media. Err.22 is almost always a mechanical problem, and as he just tried to replace the belt, I would never suspect the media.
On rare occasions, the head assembly can be defective, or dirty, which will also generate this error, which generally means that either the data on the disk can't be read, or the header or files table can't be read, or that the data is of the incorrect format. (GD games, and possibly MIDI disks will cause ERR.22 for these reasons.)
Usually a media defect, IIRC, is Err.28 or something else along those lines. I'd need to load one of my truly bad disks to check. On a side-note, if the media defect is in the right spot, it is occasionally possible to write a very small game such as 'Galaxian' to the disk, assuming the files it terminate before the defect, for FDS disks read from the initial position in a spiral (as a single track).
Some media problems are only on one side as well, permitting use of the other disk side without a problem.
I often ask people with very few games to send them with the drive mechanism when having it serviced, as I can then check the validity of their disks as well, just as a precaution, but I almost never get bad disks, even in lots by the hundred. :bomb:
I couldn't fix this error either before I learnt you have to fasten the screws on the drive...
Hey guys, thanks for the replies!
I laughed at the bra pic too- pretty funny.
Worked with the FDS some more today, made several more adjustments. No dice.
I feel like I'm possibly missing something. It's frustrating to say the least. Would it be helpful
if I upped a short video to show you the drive in operation? Perhaps it could serve as an aid in a diagnosis?
If so let me know and I will. I'd love to get this beauty going! Thanks everyone-
It would not be useful; we all know this problem. Some of us can cure it blindfolded, whereas others can shift parts until it works, and the rest just can't repair the drives.
Yet another classical example of why buying bargain 'fix-it yourself' drives is such a bad idea. If it was simple to get them running, then these eBay guys selling dead drives with belts would be repairing them first, and selling them for a greater mark-up.
You can't even be certain that the included belt is either in good condition, or the correct replacement part. If it's the wrong belt, then you will never get out of ERR.22-land.
That is why I refuse to restore drives with a customer-provided belt: I know that my belts are correct, but the one you have could be anything, for anything.
One customer repair arrived with a hand-cut, uneven, heat-fused black band that was off in every dimension and cut at an angle.
He spent weeks mucking about with his FDS, as I recall, to no avail, before sending it to me.
Other people meddle with the factory-set head position because of bad information in one of the guided on the Internet, then they pay extra for me to manually re-adjust and re-seal it.
The bottom line: This is not a job for the amateur! :bomb:
Xious, thanks for your post.
You know, it just seems crazy that I have been unable to fix this thing. I usually have about 98% success rate with electronics. As a video engineer myself, and with the machine
at work on our test bench, I have had several other co-workers looking at this as well that have experience with older computers, and it is baffling everyone.
I understand that you have been able to earn some money fixing these, and I have read some of your other posts stating 'do not reveal your strategies in fixing these' or something to
that effect, however just maybe a hint, or pointing me in the right direction would be entirely appreciated. As I said, I am flat broke right now and couldn't afford another bill.
Also, at $100 plus shipping/ costs, was this a 'bargain' drive in your opinion? I am unsure of the cost of FDS', working or otherwise.
Thanks so much for your feedback- cheers
Wow, for $100 is should have worked. I paid around $20 for each of my drives and one worked fine and the other needed a new drive belt. Both work perfectly.
Can you tell if the drive head has been adjusted. If so, you're in for a frustrating time getting it to work.
No, can't really tell, though I really don't think that it has. Of course this is just speculation- though it has never once been touched by me.
Xious does give a lot of feedback and hints, he even has a pdf to exactly detail how to change the belt and tune it. It's not a secret...
I think he has given you at least three pointers in the right direction (belt, factory-set head position , dirty head assembly)...
There's no magic button.
Hi Fred
I have never adjusted the factory set head position.
The head is not dirty.
The belt was sent to me from Hard-Off in Japan, who stated it was the correct belt.
So, I'm still stuck here...thanks for your post though.
I do feel like the seller raked me over the coals now, to the tune of about 75$, after doing some more research on these. Total bummer.
Thanks everyone for your messages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPgYWjwu9b0
Ah yes, the Dusk system.
Seriously though, I had the error 22 for two months. Even bought two drives (from Japan) one at the time to compare. The second one was sold as working condition so I could compare with it directly step by step. Finally then I solved it.
As I mentioned in my first post, it wasn't so hard.
Still had trouble later after that, because I had the idea the magnetic head should be the other way around for some reason.
But now I think I have gotten the hang of it...
Try putting some slight pressure on the pressure arm as it scans the disk. You can do this by pressing down on it or by pulling up lightly on the back of it. Hope this makes sense.
Disk drives a finicky bastards. Plus, Xious (as far as I know) gives the system the works and even offers a 1 year warranty.
Once they are working okay, they should work for a long time. My three drives have worked for a few years now with no problems, and I've used two of the drives to read, write, and dump hundreds of disks.
Wow, I sell restored drives (with a warranty) for around the price you paid for a parts unit. Did it come with the disks, or were they a separate transaction?
Anything more i gave out might as well be a detailed set of instructions, and sorry, I'm not about to do that. As I said, I'd also be willing to trade for the labour, if you have anything that I can flip for the approximate value of a servicing, or anything odd that I might want for myself. Otherwise, if you can't get it running, I pretty much run a nicely discounted FW price on a regular basis, which occasionally fluctuates with my cost of business and psychotherapy.
I had such a pile of these last year driving me bonkers, especially when people broke parts, meddled with things based on the so-called 'guides', or had extra 'features' (http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=6971.0)in them. I managed to restore every one to 100%+, save one that I restored to 9X%+ (which is something like the year 199X from so many titles) that had physical damage and was pretty much a salvage unit that the owner wanted me to restore.
I didn't want to charge him insane prices for labour that would far exceed the value of another drive, so I replaced the parts to which he agreed, and I stopped when it worked most of the time and asked him what he wanted me to do. Working on that one drained a lot of my time and effort--it was possibly the most broken FDS I have ever seen--and was delaying other work. Most people would have broken it down to use as pieces, whilst I replaced parts of the assembly, the motor, the return spring, adjusted the head return and the media pressure tension springs, lubricated everything twice, and mostly did it at a loss.
Suffice to say, i will not be beaten by such a thing. Once in a while. it would refuse to spin a disk, but when ejected and re-inserted, it would work, which is the best you can do with that kind of mechanism. This has to do with the frame, and mechanical faults. the poor thing must have been seriously abused, and yes, i did have to adjust the head, as the factory wax was removed by either the previous owner, or a previous repair attempt, and it was extremely off calibration.
I re-set it, which takes a long time, as when the rest of a mechanism is out of alignment, it is a very touchy procedure to calibrate the read-head, which may as well need be set to a specific micron. After I re-set it, I also resealed it with my special red sealing wax, and I sealed the springs with the same wax, just as the factory had done.
As far as the belt that you have is concerned, it may be correct, and it may not. I have no way to say for sure from here, and only my physically examining it can I determine if it is correct, and in working condition. :bomb:
If I may place a related question here - My drive seems to have a little motor problem and I wanted to give the motor some lubrication. I also found this
http://www.famicomdisksystem.com/disk-copy/#speed info about adjusting speed of the motor. BUT since I haven't found any hole on the motor where can I put some oil, I tried to turn the "screw" ..just to see if something happens. But the screw is not a real screw, it's just a rubber flap covering the hole in the motor. I can't seem to "find" anything underneath the flap (with a screwdriver), so my question is - is this hole really for adjusting the speed of the motor, or is it a hole for lubrication?
It's a potentiometer under that hole. You need a very small, jeweler's sized, bladed screwdriver to adjust it. Do not try to lubricate it from there... In fact, trying to lubricate it is a bad idea in general, as the motor is sealed and adding machine oil to anywhere without opening it properly will only put oil onto the electrical contacts. :bomb:
Thanks for the quick reply, I was going to oil it through there any minute :D
Aye, you'd have been in for a heap of trouble. I'd love to lubricate the motors on these things, but it's more trouble than it is worth. if you decide to open it be very careful and gentle, as there is a PCB inside that is extremely easy to damage!
Even being careful, they occasionally crack and you'll need to repair traces, which is never any fun. There is no simple way to lubricate it anyhow. What is it doing that you think it absolutely needs it? :bomb:
P.S. Remember to use machine oil for this, if you decide to try.
I have a sewing machine oil for stuff like that, no worries. I was going to do a video of my drive's behavior, which doesn't look like alignment problem, more like something motor related, either it's not lubricated properly or it's not getting the right voltage... anyway I'll post it later.
Well, after another 3 days of 'loosen spindle hub, turn gear 5 degrees, re-tighten' I'm really about to load my shotgun. :fire:
I strted getting 'error 27' and I thought I was almost there.....
Xious, how much do you charge to repair an FDS? Where are you located?
(and in closing, was I getting warmer with the new error code? lol)
Thanks all
Pricing and other information is all here (http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=5828.0). Please contact me by P.M. if you wish to schedule a service. :bomb:
Error 27 is better than Error 22.
You might just need to adjust the speed of the motor.
Actually, Err.22, Err.27 and Err.21 are pretty much all the same thing: They can be from spindle alignment, motor calibration, or a handful of other causes that I'd rather not delve into. The motor speed can be the cause, but it's just as likely the mechanism alignment.
A fun fact: If the mechanism is not aligned, the Err.21/27 speed problems can be swapped. On a correctly calibrated and aligned mechanism, they mean something specific, but if the calibration is off in either direction, then they reverse in function.
Also keep in mind that none of the games being used to align this drive are 'difficult' games, in terms of FDS loading. It might have other problems when you toss a more complex disk at it, unless you use complex disks (plural) during the alignment procedure.
I generally test around 20 (or more) different disks about thrice each, and they must all load, every time, before I am satisfied. :bomb: