I've scavenged a motor from a dead hard disk drive, and would like to put it to use. It has what appears to be three 'pins' on the bottom, and feels like a stepper motor (that is, I can feel 'detents' as I spin the shaft of the motor--15 degrees per step).
Any ideas as to how to wire this thing up?
I guess that's a 'no'.
Time to start experimenting!
I don't think that's a stepper. Sounds more like a motor with an RPM pin. Steppers are usually 4+ wires.
There is a link on figuring out what stepper you have. Search the site as I've lost it but know it's here somewhere.
This from a site, don't know how good.
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/io/stepper/wires.asp
I guess that's a 'no'.
Time to start experimenting!
Its not a Stepper Motor.
3 wire HDD motors are 3 phase DC Brushless Motors. Like Stepper Motors, they don't spin with single DC or AC voltage/current.
Take a look at this:
There is a good technical overview on driving brushless motors in this wiki: http://bldc.wikidot.com/p-esc-motor including a link to atmega88 assembler code for driving a hard disc motor that could be ported to run on the atmega168 if you want to tackle that.
You may also want to look at using a standard radio control brushless speed controller and/or search for C source code for an avr brushless electronic speed controller (ESC).
Awesome--thanks for all the pointers!