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Auto Floppy Repair Info

macuserman

Well-known member
What's the best info and guides that are not dead links for complete drive rebuilds on the auto floppy drives? I have some I need to go through top to bottom, and I have found info scattered around but nothing all in one place, and a lot of dead links. Forgive me if my google foo is not up to snuff and I just missed it. I ordered some of the replacement gears, but this level of digging into the drives is deeper than I normally go. I have cleaned the dust of them but not dug in to it as deep as gear replacement and re lubing. It's been awhile since I dug this deep into one, just want to make sure I have the latest info, for best success.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
And thanks to that handy video I’ve got a working drive again. I will say the first eject mechanism I tried made noise but did not eject so I took one from another drive on the repair pile and put a fresh gear and lube in it and it worked a treat. I need to figure out what’s wrong with the first eject since I did the same work on it but it still says no thanks.
 

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Phipli

Well-known member
I was doing the same over the weekend :) The CLUNK is so nice to hear :)


Nice looking Q700 :) Sadly I never picked one up.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
I was doing the same over the weekend :) The CLUNK is so nice to hear :)


Nice looking Q700 :) Sadly I never picked one up.
Right! It's such a simple thing, but I was so incredibly pleased with myself, might have inserted and ejected the disk a few more times than was truly necessary just because of the ear splitting grin it caused me to have. Yeah the Q700 is a wonderful machine, this one here is actually going to a member here, now that it is all fixed up.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
Right! It's such a simple thing, but I was so incredibly pleased with myself, might have inserted and ejected the disk a few more times than was truly necessary just because of the ear splitting grin it caused me to have. Yeah the Q700 is a wonderful machine, this one here is actually going to a member here, now that it is all fixed up.
I'm sure they'll be over the moon with it. They're a good forever computer. Love that they have tantalum capacitors and take a good amount of video RAM.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
Well after my initial success my efforts at repairing my other drives have failed, I now have a couple disassembled as I attempted to swap eject motors etc in an effort to get complete working units. So far failure, and man what a frustrating process for it not to work, completely cleaned regreased, and a new eject gear only for it not to work. Drives either don't read the disk at all, or won't eject no matter what motor I swap into them or how well I clean them. :(
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
@macuserman Eject motors are a very common point of failure. There's one gear in particular that becomes brittle with age. If it's not ejecting, it's almost certainly because the gear has disintegrated. It's trivial to remove the metal plate and put in a new gear. What's not trivial is finding a good gear replacement. I bought a set of 3D printed gears a while back, and they just don't work. They make a horrible grinding noise and sometimes get stuck. I don't think the gear was designed properly, there's subsection of maths just for making gears and gear ratios.

As for not reading disks, I suggest using warm water + a tiny bit of dish soap to clean the heads. Then one more clean with isopropyl alcohol to remove any potential soap residue. I found that warm water + soap will remove dirt, oil, and grime way better than just IPA alone. I've resurrected a couple drives with just soap & water that refused to work even after a liberal cleaning with IPA.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
@macuserman Eject motors are a very common point of failure. There's one gear in particular that becomes brittle with age. If it's not ejecting, it's almost certainly because the gear has disintegrated. It's trivial to remove the metal plate and put in a new gear. What's not trivial is finding a good gear replacement. I bought a set of 3D printed gears a while back, and they just don't work. They make a horrible grinding noise and sometimes get stuck. I don't think the gear was designed properly, there's subsection of maths just for making gears and gear ratios.

As for not reading disks, I suggest using warm water + a tiny bit of dish soap to clean the heads. Then one more clean with isopropyl alcohol to remove any potential soap residue. I found that warm water + soap will remove dirt, oil, and grime way better than just IPA alone. I've resurrected a couple drives with just soap & water that refused to work even after a liberal cleaning with IPA.
Well, that's good to know, I found what I thought was a reputable seller of replacement gears they seem to work ok as far as fitment. I haven't tried soap and water on the heads I was afraid of damaging them but I suppose if they are already broke not much to lose.
 

volvo242gt

Well-known member
Get in touch with @maceffects for the gears. His are slightly noisier than stock, but are a close match to the originals. Paolo B. over at TinkerDifferent posted a how-to slide show on how to adjust the zero track sensor on the Sony drives. Was able to get a couple of my drives working reliably by following it.


First post on the second page.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
Get in touch with @maceffects for the gears. His are slightly noisier than stock, but are a close match to the originals. Paolo B. over at TinkerDifferent posted a how-to slide show on how to adjust the zero track sensor on the Sony drives. Was able to get a couple of my drives working reliably by following it.


First post on the second page.
Oooh! Thanks for the tip on these. I had no idea maceffects had these I am using some 3d printed gears! I'll order these ASAP!
 

Chopsticks

Well-known member
Well, that's good to know, I found what I thought was a reputable seller of replacement gears they seem to work ok as far as fitment. I haven't tried soap and water on the heads I was afraid of damaging them but I suppose if they are already broke not much to lose.
usual IPA on a q-tip is the best way to go when first cleaning the drive heads, sometimes this doesn't work and even if you can't really see anything on the heads they may still not be fully clean.
when I find a drive in that stage I then apply the soapy water, but I use mineral free water to mix it with. afterwards I re-clean with IPA, hasn't fixed every drive but it has fixed 3-4 stubborn drives that wouldn't read/write after and initial clean with IPA...
 

macuserman

Well-known member
Alright so with the higher quality mac effects gears and lube my drive is now very strongly ejecting drives hurray! Now however when I put in a disk it wants me to initialize it and that eventually just fails even if I tried to, put a known good disk asks to be reformated as well... Any thoughts? Should I swap my newly cleaned mech, and eject gear onto a different base plate and PCB? I have a couple different drives available to work with if needed.
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
Edit: Before adjusting the motor as mentioned below, you could also try moving the spring for the head up a notch. It could just be a bit too loose. This might get it working again. If that doesn't work, then I'd recommend proceeding with the Dead Mac Scrolls alignment procedure.

I think that could be an alignment issue. If you can download a copy of The Dead Mac Scrolls, there's a section on there for aligning the drive. This will require a known good floppy disk formatted on a known good drive. This will be your reference disk. With that reference disk in hand, you can then make some very fine adjustments on the screw for the motor assembly. By adjusting the screw by a hair's width (very tiny amounts) and repeatedly inserting your reference disk, you can hopefully get it to the point where it'll read & format disks reliably that are also useable on other drives.
 

macuserman

Well-known member
Edit: Before adjusting the motor as mentioned below, you could also try moving the spring for the head up a notch. It could just be a bit too loose. This might get it working again. If that doesn't work, then I'd recommend proceeding with the Dead Mac Scrolls alignment procedure.

I think that could be an alignment issue. If you can download a copy of The Dead Mac Scrolls, there's a section on there for aligning the drive. This will require a known good floppy disk formatted on a known good drive. This will be your reference disk. With that reference disk in hand, you can then make some very fine adjustments on the screw for the motor assembly. By adjusting the screw by a hair's width (very tiny amounts) and repeatedly inserting your reference disk, you can hopefully get it to the point where it'll read & format disks reliably that are also useable on other drives.
Thanks for that, I got the drive to where it mounts disks, and can read them. I still occasionally get some sort of error pop-up, and I'm unable to write to the disk at all. Also, the drive is very loud so not sure but I still don't have it quite right. I wish there was a mail-in service for these for someone who is good at it I'd happily pay to have it adjusted just right. Guess I need to fiddle some more but it's not a super fun process I'll say that, it would help if I could find a longer floppy cable that would work without me having to reinstall the drive to test it.
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
Since it's a Super Drive in a Quadra 700, I think a regular 20 pin male-male ribbon cable should work.
 
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