olePigeon
Well-known member
I had a marathon clean / lubrication with some troublesome floppy drives I have. Ran into a few inconsistent issues that (sometimes) swapping parts around fixed, such as swapping heads around from different mechanisms. Some heads work better than others, even though they've all been thoroughly cleaned.
I was wondering about the caps, though. There're six capacitors on the Sony HD drives. One of my drives is a first revision -01G drive, which means it shipped back when the SE and II were getting FDHD upgrades. The others are all later revision -21G. So those caps are old. They're not surface mount, though, like the LC and IIci, so I doubt they've leaked any significant amount. And floppy drives aren't high power devices, either. Well, there are a couple 50v rated caps in there.
Do you guys think we should bother with recapping floppy drives? Or just leave them? A few of my floppy drives are just intermittent with their issues, and no swapping of parts or half-assed calibration will get them to work reliably. So I do wonder if caps could be an issue.
I know a lot of people hate the shotgun approach to repairs, but caps are relatively cheap and easy to replace. I also don't have an oscilloscope (or even know how to use one if I did) to be able to properly diagnose and calibrate a floppy drive.
I was wondering about the caps, though. There're six capacitors on the Sony HD drives. One of my drives is a first revision -01G drive, which means it shipped back when the SE and II were getting FDHD upgrades. The others are all later revision -21G. So those caps are old. They're not surface mount, though, like the LC and IIci, so I doubt they've leaked any significant amount. And floppy drives aren't high power devices, either. Well, there are a couple 50v rated caps in there.
Do you guys think we should bother with recapping floppy drives? Or just leave them? A few of my floppy drives are just intermittent with their issues, and no swapping of parts or half-assed calibration will get them to work reliably. So I do wonder if caps could be an issue.
I know a lot of people hate the shotgun approach to repairs, but caps are relatively cheap and easy to replace. I also don't have an oscilloscope (or even know how to use one if I did) to be able to properly diagnose and calibrate a floppy drive.