Fixing the eject mechanism on a M0131 external floppy drive

[sega dude]

I purchased a M0131 800K external floppy drive from ebay and received it today. In the auction description it states that the drive reads and writes fine, but that the electronic eject mechanism is not functioning. Now that I have it, it seems like the whole mechanism is stuck down like there is a disc inserted, but there isn't, as far as I can tell.  I hooked it up to my Macintosh Plus, and booted it up with a disk in it's drive, not the external drive. The Macintosh Plus seems to think there is a disk in the drive, because I get a "Disk is unreadable by this computer" message. I can't even get a floppy into the external drive, since the mechanism seems to be stuck down. What could be causing this? Is it fixable? If I use the emergency eject hole, the mechanism comes up, but goes back down again.

 

[Elfen]

It sounds like broken gears in the electro-ejection servo and the pinion gear is set at its furthest point (where it would if the disk is in).

Time to take it apart and take pictures. And while you have it apart, clean and lube it. PM Gnolivos about getting new gears for the drive, he reversed engineered a set and is selling them. Here is his thread:

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/24328-replacement-gear-for-floppy-eject-mechanism/

 

[raoulduke]

Yeah... or... if only someone had exhaustively sourced new ones and then received no replies on them...

 

[CC_333]

Yeah... or... if only someone had exhaustively sourced new ones and then received no replies on them...

Like you!

Speaking of which, I might actually be interested in one or two, after I inventory my drives (a few had bad ejector motors, but I can't recall which ones).

However, back to the point here, getting one of raoulduke's NOS (?) ejector motors would be a MUCH better way to go here.

c

 

[Paralel]

Why Apple insisted on the auto ejection mechanism rather than a manual eject system, I'll never know...

 

[raoulduke]

I didn't buy them because nobody expressed interest.  The supplier suggested that for / 10 it'd be $12; did not give a single price.  But it won't be cost-effective.

 

[sega dude]

I think I am going to contact the seller, explain the situation and see what happens. The auction states that they don't accept returns, but I'll try. If i'm stuck with it, I'd like to fix it as a summer project, I don't have the time to devote to it now. I fixed my Macintosh Plus back in the Summer of 2014 (touched up solder joints on the Analog board), so I'm sure I could fix this external drive as well.

EDIT: I got the external drive working! After playing with the emergency eject hole and ejecting from the OS, it miraculously starting working, electronic eject and all. Very happy.

 

[Paralel]

Make sure to hold the seller accountable for anything that was either not included in the description or was not as described. In those cases you deserve at least a partial refund.