KayPro II and KayPro 2x boot issues

[davidestewart]

Hello all,
I have two KayPro's that seem to behave in the same fashion:

The KayPro II powers up and yields a message on the display requesting a disk be inserted in Drive A. The drive lights to not come on and there is no drive head activity. I can hear the drive motors spinning.

The KayPro 2x came with a dead power supply so I "borrowed" the one from my KayPro II for testing. After doing the swap, the KayPro 2x also shows the same behavior. Powers up to a legible screen reading "KayPro Corporation Version x.02(?)". Unfortunately no disk activity or drive lights. I also can hear the drive motors spinning.

Any ideas where to start with this one?

 

[ldkraemer]

If I were having that issue, the first thing I'd do is pull the floppy's and clean the heads, clean then lube the guide rails (Tandon TM-100-x) series if that what
was installed for the Floppy Drives. I use the Motorcycle Lubricant Dri-Slide on the head guide rails to lube them. It doesn't attract dirt and makes the
heads assembly step much easier. If you have the proper version Boot floppy for each model, it should boot from floppy.

The good thing is you have messages on both computers, so everything is at least working enough to try and boot. You can open each computer and locate
the ROM Labels and then from the ROM Labels you can identify the proper boot disk.

Larry

 

[davidestewart]

If I were having that issue, the first thing I'd do is pull the floppy's and clean the heads, clean then lube the guide rails (Tandon TM-100-x) series if that what
was installed for the Floppy Drives. I use the Motorcycle Lubricant Dri-Slide on the head guide rails to lube them. It doesn't attract dirt and makes the
heads assembly step much easier. If you have the proper version Boot floppy for each model, it should boot from floppy.

The good thing is you have messages on both computers, so everything is at least working enough to try and boot. You can open each computer and locate
the ROM Labels and then from the ROM Labels you can identify the proper boot disk.

Larry

Larry,
There is no disk head activity or drive light activity. It's like the disks don't exist. I have tried boot disks and the drive heads do not seek on boot.

 

[davidestewart]

Larry,
The drives do not seek for a disk when the system powers up. There is no drive head activity and the drive lights do not come on.

 

[Nama]

I'm having an issue with my Kaypro 4/84 where initially the PSU did not seem to gave enough current/voltage to power up drive 2. Eventually after about 5 to 10 mins the drive would start working. The machine has been in storage for about a year and I recently pulled it out again. Problem seems worse. Now it takes 5 to 10 mins to get the machine to power up. After it on it works fine. An hour later the drive 2 came to life. That was yesterday...this morning, machine didn't power up again.

I think for me it's time for a recap of the PSU

 

[durgadas311]

I'm having an issue with my Kaypro 4/84 where initially the PSU did not seem to gave enough current/voltage to power up drive 2. Eventually after about 5 to 10 mins the drive would start working. The machine has been in storage for about a year and I recently pulled it out again. Problem seems worse. Now it takes 5 to 10 mins to get the machine to power up. After it on it works fine. An hour later the drive 2 came to life. That was yesterday...this morning, machine didn't power up again.

I think for me it's time for a recap of the PSU

You may have wanted to start a new thread, rather than add-on to this rather old one.

Are you sure that the power supply is the problem? Have you made measurements that show that? I can't be certain from your description, but is it possible that the disk drives mechanicals are "gunked up"? Could there be something obstructing the motor from spinning, and/or old dry grease preventing the heads from moving? Have these drives ever been services in recent years? When you say "takes 5 to 10 mins to get the machine to power up" do you mean it takes that long before the OS boots? Or that it takes that long for the CRT to light up and show text? Or ??? If the drives were gunked-up, the ROM bootloader would just patiently wait until something happened and it was able to read the boot tracks.