Just take your time to fully recover. Vintage computers (and we) can wait.

David, you have the rarest of unobtanium! Inspect it for crashes! Assuming none, unplug the heads of the drive and install the pack. Spin up the drive and let it blow out for at least an hour spun up. You have a new filter, right? Manually load the heads gently. Move across the disk a couple times. There should be no noticeable resistance (vibration?). If it feels good, spin it down and connect the heads. Connect the o-scope and spin it back up. You'll need diagnostic software to seek to the position of the signal. Slightly loosen the head and gently adjust the head to get the proper signal on the scope. Gently tighten the head back to the proper torque. It will go out of alignment. If it's too far out, try it again. Remember it needs to be in tolerance, not perfect! Every time you mess with it you run the risk of crashing the pack. Best of luck! My friend Kenny was so good with Phenix and 288s that he's look at the scope, give it a quick tweak, lock the head down, and it was perfect every time! It was amazing to work with him!

The "Alignment Cartridge" Sticker caught my eye when it first scrolled by. I was like "WTF Is this real? How insanely random is that!?"

You found the golden ticket. As soon as saw I saw the blue cover I had a feeling it was an alignment pack. Make sure your write enable is OFF before you insert it in the drive. You don't want a random write to trash the pack. Did CDC have an external control box to exercise the pack. With the HPs drives (79xx) we had a test set we use to test and align the drives.

"Convention Crud"... The bane of expositions since long before 2019.

I know of it as the "Con Crud". The Monday after a convention, it's gonna hit you, just from being around a bunch of people who have come from a bunch of different places. But by far the worst thing to knock me over was last year I apparently got something up in my sinuses after mowing the back yard on a high mold allergen day. It knocked me over for a week, so I have some idea how you must have been feeling. [2:20] Um... "alignment cartridge"??? Holy crap. It's a miracle. And yeah, you can't just "copy" an alignment disk. Well maybe you could copy the waveform, but half of the point is that the tracks are laid down at a precise position with perfectly aligned heads.

Get well soon. Take it slow and treat yourself good !

OMG What an incredible find!! Christian if you're out there, you're an absolute hero!

Christian is the GOAT! Holy .... It's unbelievable that platter was found. David, you need to make sure he's acknowledged every. single. time. that platter is used. Name it "Christian's Disk/Platter/Golden TIcket".

Wow, David! I can’t believe what an unbelievable find that is. Add a yard sale? No fucking way. Oh yeah, get better soon so we can see you use this this alignment pack to align all your centurion Hawk drives. I just can’t believe this story. I don’t mean just this video I mean the centurion story from beginning to where we are now. It’s fantastic feel better, bro.

Wow! You brought back a memory from nearly 40 years ago! I mentioned at one time that there was a special pattern on an oscilloscope that is used to calibrate the Hawk and Phoenix drives, and this is it. I did it a couple of times on the ones sold with Ontel Corporations "intelligent" terminals. From what I recall, it was a pain in the backside. I agree. Cat belly rubs and kitty head butts are the best for healing. That works all the time for us here. Rest up that bug knocks the socks right off of you. My niece gave it to us a couple of months ago and we were laid up for just as long and it took about a week afterwards before feeling normal. This wasn't COVID-19 since we tested for it. It was just a nasty bug.

Get well soon, please rest up! And thanks for telling us about this awesome find 🥳

Take your time, but here's wishing you to get well soon, man. This looks like food for some really interesting videos coming up! Taking good care of yourself is the best way to a speedy recovery.

I regret nothing about spending most of Sunday at VCF at your repair-a-thon. You do good with a peanut gallery. Sorry about the lanyard situation. That was me who got your $5. Hope you and whoever at VCF worked things out amicably. Hope the Hammer does too.

What an incredible find, and kudos to Christian for realising that it was something special and getting to someone who could use it! Awesome 🤩 In the meantime, David, get well soon and don't over do it. Take the time you need to get properly well.

Over the various Centurion episodes, I've been thinking over and over again "you could really do with an alighment disk".... so... great stuff!!!

Glad you are feeling better. What a great find. I’d hope you were able to get some info on where that garage sale was. I wonder what else they might have had.

No real content, but I did get my dose of cuteness at the end. You know, if you ever face a week when you can't put out a video, just give us an video with your various animals being adorable.

Welcome back and glad you are feeling a bit better! Was great to chat with you at VCF East and cool watching the drive repair from time to time we stopped in to see how things were going.

Rest and get better, David! Love your videos!

I just watched the "Health Update and a Really Cool Disk Pack" video, and I have to say, it was really informative and interesting! Thanks for sharing such valuable insights and that neat disk pack. Keep up the great work!

My parents had a Triad system at their hardware store in the 90s ... It was just a bland 486 running interactive unix and a pile of COBOL ... BUT the field engineer would tell me about how the old systems had those hawk drives and needed to be tuned with an osciliscope when heads were replaced. He had been with the co for a long time. Very interested to see more about the triad system! Great stuff

I came home from VCF East sick also, sinuses, chest congestion, etc. No fever. I thought it was just the pollen, which is high, but there must be something new going around. Keep up the good work you do.

get well soon. we‘ll stick to your channel anyway. take your time and take good care ❤

Not a bad video at all! And what a yard sale find! Blessings and health to you, master of all things technology!

Man, those are some nice photos from VCF East. 😎

I returned from the UK just over a week ago. I came back with the worst flu I've ever had in my life. The air on the plane made the symptoms even worse. There have been side effects of this thing including tooth issues for which I am now on a course of antibiotics. This is the first trip anywhere I've taken since 2019 and it figures that the moment I get myself into the wider world surrounded by lots of people I'd catch something. WFH for over 4 years has its downsides ... you don't get the opportunity to adapt to the nastys out there. Feel better,

Christian! What a find, you rock!!

Good things keep happening to the right people - I am, of course, not referring to the virus. Absolutely amazed that you have the alignment disk. Looking forward to learning how it gets used.

Old 5.25 inch alignment disks are essentially the same! Analog, rare, and expensive when you find one.

In Dr Bernard's voice "Take care of yourself, and be well!"

That is a rear find... When you know what you had. I think you where a very happy person.

Rest up brother!

That is just gorgeous! This is like a kid going fossil hunting and finding the entire intact skull of a hitherto unknown species of dinosaur.

That's a super cool find! Looking forward to more of this unique calibration disk! And I hope you feel better really soon!

Get well soon, David!! ❤

AN ALIGNMENT PACK! OMG! Freaking Incredible you get your hands on one, as you said those are exceptionally rare, I don't think you can use a regular hawk to copy it, you may need special electronics on a known calibrated unit to save the eye pattern. Fantastic news!! , Looking forward for that episode! And hope you get well soon, take care!

That was so nice of Christian! Get well fast, Sir.

That's just amazing! We're all very lucky. I hope you feel better!

Take all the time you need to recover from that con crud. We’re not going anywhere. I can relate so well to how you’re feeling. The last bug that put me on my back was one I brought back from Montreal. It started doing its thing already on the way back home to Germany. I usually cannot sleep on a plane. But that one knocked me out good. I felt (and looked) like death warmed up when boarding. Probably was running a fever already and slept through the entire flight. It wasnt the Rona, but man, that sucked so bad. Took me out of commission for almost 2 weeks.

Could have been actual flu rather than a cold, I've only had it once and I was off work for 2 weeks, during the worst of it I felt like I was dying, this was when I young and it was very rare for me to take a single day off. Take whatever time you need to recover, we'll still be here, get well soon.

Great to see you get a alignment cartridge! What a great find! It sucks that you came down with some type of virus. I hope you recover soon.

Hope you get well soon. What an amazing find! Looking forward to seeing the head alignment video.

Glad you are starting to feel better, hope you are feeling much better soon. Still a great video and such an amazing find. Thank you for sharing

Feel better man! Amazing find!

Get well soon. Christian is such a great guy, legend already!

Well done to Christian and his family for finding such a treasure. Get well soon David, airplanes are a great petri dish of nasties

I’m sorry you got sick, I know what that virus is like and it’s no fun! But thanks for sharing and get that last bit of healing in. Very cool alignment pack! 🙂

Christian found that at a yard sale? Crazy AND fortunate! Very, very cool!

Glad you're starting to feel better, hope you get well soon. It's awesome that you got your hands on a head alignment disk! I'm really interested to see how using it to align the heads is different from how you aligned them last time.

I hope you feel better soon. Cool that you have an official alignment pack. I love watching your videos even if I'll never see, let alone touch any big metal machines like you work on. Thanks for all you do and your positive outlook is really infectious. Sorry, poor choice of words I guess.

That clip at the end elicited 3 "aaawww!"s and an "ooohhh!" from me and it was very cute! Let me just wish you get well soon. There's too much unreasonable stigma around covid, and it's none of our business what your illness is anyway.

A fantastic find. I had the dreaded CV back at Christmas time and was prescribed Paklovid ( if spelled right ) and it is a two drug combo antiviral and was almost instant in my shaking the bug in a few days. Just take care of yourself first 😀

That alignment disk is an incredible find! Get well soon!

Wow that is just excellent! Hope you feel better soon.

Ah yes, the infamous Con Crud. Hope you feel fully back to your energetic self soon!😮

Well done, Christian, and get well soon, David! ❤

Getting an alignment disk made the entire trip to VCFE worth it. Looking forward to the video where you make use of it.

As soon as I saw it I knew what it was. A little over 10 years ago I had a CE Alignment disk along with a large stack of CDC disk packs. Sadly, I needed the space and they all went to the scrap yard.😢😢😢 I still have an old CDC Hawk drive, (crashed heads and fixed platter) paired to a TI-99/10 CPU and 2 Modcomp J1 computers in the garage. I really hate to see these go to scrap but if I can't find them a new home that's probably where they will go.😢

The cat's eye adjustment is used on CD players as well, and for mostly the same purpose, although it works a little differently. CD's, of course, Are optical, not magnetic, and the signal that comes out of the optical block is an FM signal that is interpreted back into a digital signal. To align the servos on CD players old enough to have analog servos, one watched the "RF" test point with a scope, and one would see a "cat's eye" pattern. The servos would then be adjusted to produce the widest, clearest window in the middle of the pattern. No special disk is necessary, just a clean and unscratched CD.

Wow! Lucky you! You found a CE pack! I had been thinking you would need one of these to fix up the drives. You also need a hockey key with an excenter nose to allow you to move the heads for adjustment. That is tricky and caused a fair number of head crashes in our course in 1988 for these drives. We scrapped on average one of these CE-packs per person in that week. So they were not that rare, just expensive. I do not think that you can easily copy CE packs without special precision drives. At least that was what we were told at the time. And you would only find these packs in disk overhaul workshops. So, this pack coming from New England, I guess that must be one of the packs that might have been used by DEC workshop at the time. Now you can really can fix drives! All you need now is an assured supply of CDC disk heads. Not sure if there is now still any new old stock available out there. Or are you saying you can fix crashed heads with a lot of TLC? Anyway! Good luck and well done for finding this pacl! That is an amazing find.

And, David get well quick. I'm glad you are improving :-)

Welcome back, and hope you feel better soon.

Hope you feel better soon David. Well done to Christian for the find!

That's amazing!!! Cristian L. Is a Centurion hero!

Thanks for putting up a video while you're still recovering, even if it was just to say "Hi"! Feel better soon. Genki!

Get well soon ! 🙋‍♀️

Sorry to hear you got sick. Hope you continue to get better!

Used an alignment disk at Data 100 / Sycor. We used them on both floppy and hard removable drives. Carried my own scope with me. It had a special place in my trunk.

There's something very nasty going round. I was also wiped out for a week recently - only just starting to get better. Hope you get back to normal soon!

Best wishes for a thorough healing.

What a find! Get well soon!

Get well soon dude!

I hope you feel better. Rest up and can't wait to see another video from you!

Thanks for another interesting video, Dave. I Appreciate the effort, since you are still Battling the virus. Take care, and get well soon, Man. You Rock 😀👍

i hope by now your have recover. after I spent 2 months back in 73/74 to make a copy of the pack I gave up as it was next to make a copy on IBM SYS 10. we did not have enough control over the drive to get down to the nuts and bolts to write the tracks need to make the pack.

Feel better soon Love your videos and appreciate all your hard work We will be here I think im emotionaly invested with the Bendex at this point. Old vacuum tube stuff is cool. Like looking into a microchip

WOOOOO CT gang represent!!! i hope you feel better soon david, youre a treasure and your videos always brighten my day. get well soon! 🐇

Well, Sunday afternoon and I was expecting a video. I got one too, albeit short, but with an incredible tale in it, this sort of thing almost never happens. I hope the pack turns out to be undamaged and good, but for now, just concentrate on getting you back to normal 😁

Oh man! I know what it’s like to come back with a nasty case of the con-crud so don’t worry about putting out videos while you work on getting better. Get well soon.

I have felt your pain. There is a Crud going around and I caught it last November. Not covid, not the flu. I tested negative for covid and the symptoms did not match. And I know what the flu feels like. I have also had the shots for both. This is different. Coughing violently and horking up phlegm day and night. It also lingers a long time. Months later, still coughing. Only rest seems to help.

It must be an 8-bit virus... for real now, I wish you a quick recovery! 🙃

Cats do make good sick buddies.

Wow - not good to hear - get some proper rest and speedy recovery. While we miss the video's and updates, we can wait !

As far as I know you cannot makeva copy of an alignment disk. I worked on Hawks and their big brothers, The 100/200 MB pack model for NCR. NCR called 658 drives. I might have an alignment pack for the 658. If you ever need one, sing out.

Brilliant video, what a discovery!

The Hawk Drive Holy Grail! This is beyond imagination. Thinking back to episode one, you and a pile of Centurion. Now, you and a team of hundreds making astoningly wonderful use of the functional hardware.

Get well soon x

Get well soon David! 😊

The paradox poster from portal is great! Hope you get better soon!

I did a Lego Church Project display last year. The week in between parish locations I got taken out by something nasty. Amazed I made it to the parish for weekend 2 of that display.

Zdrówka Ziomuś!

Get well soon David!

Thanks for the video glad to here you are getting better.. Thanks for the video

Feel Better Soon

get well soon mang ..it may had not been a long video but nether the less still entertaining ..im sure that disk alingement cartridge is needed babdly ..and needed for the future ...great looking out :)

It's like saying: "I am not making a statement". Hope you feel better soon.

That's a holy grail find!

Thanks for creating a video even though you're sick, I'd be missing something on my Sunday afternoon if there wasn't a video of yours. Get a rest and some belly rubs, hope you'll be well soon!

Take your leave. Get well. We aint going nowhere. Im am super excited to see another rare piece of tech being lovingly saved. I am waiting eagerly for that video to see how the alignment works!