Hi all, Inspired by CuriousMarc's recent video, I cleaned and fixed my RL02 heads. Not with an ultrasonic cleaner unfortunately, but in a warm IPA bath. It worked! Loading a crashed pack is obviously not a good idea, although I cleaned the cartridge well, and figured with bad heads and a bad pack, I might as well try it. The heads no longer crash and appear clean after loading, but the cartridge, of course, cannot be read as the first track has been destroyed from the initial crash. I think the crash was cause by bad heads before I got the RL02 drive.
I posted some pictures of the process here: http://aaronsplace.co.uk/blog/2018-02-19-repairing-crashed-RL02-heads.html I am wondering if anyone would be willing to sell me an RL02K cartridge for a sensible price? After the cleaning I am guessing my alignment will be slightly off, but from what I have read in the manual, this is will probably just result in the read/write speed being reduced as the heads have to move slightly when switching between either side of the platter. Am I right in thinking this or completely wrong? Thanks, Aaron. -- Aaron Jackson PhD Student, Computer Vision Laboratory, Uni of Nottingham http://aaronsplace.co.uk