tanaquil
Well-known member
I have a stack of floppy drives that need repair. Probably going to tackle it later this summer.
A specific question for today, though: the 1.4 floppy in my IIsi recently failed, making horrible grinding noises (no doubt a gear issue, I'll check it out later). I thought maybe I could replace the floppy with the drive I recently pulled from my Classic, which was working when last started up (not sure how long ago that was).
I had to remove the Classic floppy from its hardware casing and put it in the IIsi casing, since the caddies are very slightly different sizes.
When I tried to install the old Classic drive in my IIsi, the mechanism works perfectly (smooth inject/eject, no bad noises, etc), but every time I insert a known good disk, it whirrs for a while and informs me that the disk is unreadable.
While it is possible that something went bad while the Classic was in storage (this was the Classic with the exploded Maxell, though I can't see any trace of corrosion on the floppy unit), I'm thinking there might be an alignment difference between the Classic and the IIsi? Or could I have knocked the motor out of alignment while transferring it from one casing to the other? Anyway, I've heard there is a way to realign floppy drives that are out of alignment, but I have no idea how to do it.
Advice welcome! I know of threads explaining how to clean and lubricate old floppy drives, but this seems like a different issue.
A specific question for today, though: the 1.4 floppy in my IIsi recently failed, making horrible grinding noises (no doubt a gear issue, I'll check it out later). I thought maybe I could replace the floppy with the drive I recently pulled from my Classic, which was working when last started up (not sure how long ago that was).
I had to remove the Classic floppy from its hardware casing and put it in the IIsi casing, since the caddies are very slightly different sizes.
When I tried to install the old Classic drive in my IIsi, the mechanism works perfectly (smooth inject/eject, no bad noises, etc), but every time I insert a known good disk, it whirrs for a while and informs me that the disk is unreadable.
While it is possible that something went bad while the Classic was in storage (this was the Classic with the exploded Maxell, though I can't see any trace of corrosion on the floppy unit), I'm thinking there might be an alignment difference between the Classic and the IIsi? Or could I have knocked the motor out of alignment while transferring it from one casing to the other? Anyway, I've heard there is a way to realign floppy drives that are out of alignment, but I have no idea how to do it.
Advice welcome! I know of threads explaining how to clean and lubricate old floppy drives, but this seems like a different issue.
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