Restoring and maintaining the disk drives in the 1130 system includes a need to align the head position in the drive to maximize the ability read cartridges written on other drives and the converse for reading mine on other systems.
IBM produced a small number of disk cartridges that had a precisely recorded signal on specific tracks that would be used by the CE to align all disk drive heads. This serves as a reference standard for alignment, a standardized measuring point. The cartridge had a red cover, to visually distinguish this special cartridge from all the ordinary ones.
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| Red cover marking a CE cartridge |
Finding ordinary 2315 disk cartridges is hard enough, although I was very fortunate to pick up several dozen as part of my 1130 system, but the CE cartridge was a tool that was kept in the IBM branch office, not owned by the user of the system. That makes it quite difficult to obtain.
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| Official CE cartridge, underside of cart at cooling air door |
This morning, while I was on the eBay site, I happened to be looking at the vintage computer category for IBM 1130 related items and up popped a listing for an IBM 1130 CE Cartridge. It had a buy it now price, so I did. It looks very clean and the seller will be packing it in molded foam which should provide more protection during shipment.
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| Looks quite clean in the pictures |
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