HP=87 Disk Drives

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

I have used both with my 86B, which is essentially a 87 without the built in monitor. The drives used in some of these diskette units are prone to the lubricant gumming up so that the drives do not operate correctly and if they may need to be cleaned and re-lubed, this is especially true of the drives used in 9121 and the first version of the 9122D. Later 9122D and the 9122C use a half high drive which is less prone to this problem.

The error you report 130 indicates that either the drive door is open or or the drive is not present, does the drive light come on when you attempt to initialize a diskette? If the diskette mechanism is gummed up the diskette may not drop into place when the door is closed and not make the diskette present switch in which case the drive would think the door is still open. Have you tried both drives in the 9122C? If it was a media problem I would expect you to get error 129 instead. I just noted in the manual it states that when you "CAT" an uninitialized diskette you will get error 130 which does not seem to match the description of the error.

edit: the description of error 130 is different in the "Operating and basic programming Manual" and the :Extended Mass storage manual", the Extended mass storage manual does not mention uninitialized media as a cause of 130.

As an aside you may also want to visit the hpseries80 group on groups.io you will find a lot of series 80 users there.