John,

   It started while I was assembling the CBIOS for a hardware change I had 
made. The B: drive started reporting errors. I thought the disk itself was 
bad but after a few disks I was able to determine it wasn't the disks. I 
opened the case and cleaned the heads (q-tip and alcohol).  This didn't 
help. A bit of swapping of hardware left me with the conclusion it was the 
drive that has failed. As I was putting everything back in the original 
configuration I had a huge static shock; it caused my system to crash. I 
didn't have a clue where the static had come from. I power cycled and the 
system came up however I wasn't able to boot to CP/M. Being unsure if the 
issue was with how I had configured everything I went back to checking 
everything over. I then received a 2nd large static shock; I realized at 
this time I had left the frame ground open on the B: drive; my guess is the 
spinning disk was building up a static charge that I had now discharged 
down the floppy drive cable... twice. :(

   On power up the controller steps the head back to track 0 (a good sign) 
and tries to boot. I get perhaps 30 seconds on normal activity before the 
floppy simply stops working; at this time the heads don't step back to 
track 0 on reset; the heads don't load etc. After shutting it off for a bit 
I can repeat this cycle. My assumption is that the static shock has 
stressed something and that the streseds part is going thermal pretty 
quickly after power up. I've swapped out the FD1771 and get the same 
behavior. Once I find my freeze mist I'll see if I can locate the failed 
component(s).

   In trying to test the MSX2 card I had completely reconfigured my system; 
I have it back in my base configuration and everything with the exception 
of the floppy controller is working as expected. I have my own monitor I've 
slowly written over the last couple of years which works as expected. I 
believe the damage was isolated to the floppy controller.

   As I don't have an 8-inch alignment floppy or a drive exerciser I'm 
hoping to send both drives out for cleaning; alignment and repair as 
required.

-Neil

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