For many years I've run an old "classic" HP 3000 in my basement 24x7.  It
isn't a big system, it isn't a fancy system, but it was a fun system.  Most
recently it has been used for old text-based games, part of what made it a
fun system.  Since being RIF'd from AOL last October, it has been my only
hands-on with an HP 3000.

Last night some thunderstorms rolled through Northern Virginia while I was
away from home, so I wasn't around for its demise.  When I got home I went
down to my basement to check on my old friend.  I hoped to see the flashing
green light on the processor and the green light on the old 7937, a 571 MB
Eagle drive, but I didn't.  The processor light was green, but the Eagle
drive had a bright red light, a light I hadn't seen before.

A whole bunch of "maybe's" ran through my head as I glanced from the front
of the hard drive to the console display.  No errors on the console.  It
looked like it was about ready to try an automatic warmstart.

I turned my attention back to the Eagle drive, and decided that maybe with
the power bouncing around, the drive electronics had gotten into some
strange state and maybe turning the power off for a few seconds, then back
on might clear the problem.  So I powered off the Eagle drive.  And I waited.

About 20 seconds later I took a deep breath and pushed the power button on
the  Eagle drive.

The front panel had the red, yellow, and green lights I'd seen on past
spin-ups, and I could hear the fans spinning up.  About a second passed,
and as I was thinking "and now the spindle should spin up" my thought was
interrupted by a sound one dreads.  The sound you hear from a transformer
when its secondary sees a dead short.  The sound an electric motor makes
when its bearings have seized and its shaft won't turn.  And then, as I
jumped back towards the power button, the sound stopped, and the front
panel went from red, yellow, and green, to just red, and I knew my old
friend was dead.

How odd, I thought, as I didn't remember hearing any bearing noises coming
from the drive.  If I had heard the bearings whining I wouldn't have been
surprised by the drive failing, but there hadn't been any tell-tale whine
or noise.

I repeated the power-off, power-on again just to make sure my mind wasn't
playing tricks on me, but the result was the same.

I remember something about there being a spindle lock for transport
purposes on the Eagle drive, but I hate to say I don't remember what you
did to lock or unlock it anymore and the diagram on the back shows
something that I can't seem to find.  I remember something about an Alen
wrench too, but with the passing of years I've forgotten where that Alen
wrench was, what size it was, and what you did with it and why.

While I seriously doubt there is any hope of resurrecting the Eagle drive,
if anyone does have any suggestions, please let me know.

John
PS  If you know of anyone looking for an HP 3000 person (SPL, SPLASH!,
BASIC, Business Basic, TurboImage) who also has Linux, Apache, PHP, Perl,
Ploticus, Samba, Sendmail, HTML, Javascript, ... experience, please let me
know.

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