Floppy Drive Weak or no Eject

[Johnnya101]

On my IIfx, I rebuilt both floppy drives, lubed and cleaned them, and made sure to install new gears that have the nub at around 11 oclock position.

One floppy drive works fine data wise, but it sounds like it struggles to eject, even with the new gear. The other drive seems dead half the time, and won't even eject the disk. The motor whirs but nothing happens.

Anything I should look for? I'll go back and check my work.

 

[LaPorta]

do you have photos of them at all?

 

[cheesestraws]

Might be worth seeing whether the other gears are worn beyond the point of working properly, especially if you can hear the motor spinning but nothing actually happens.

 

[Johnnya101]

So I looked at both drives, the gears are fine and positioned correctly. The left drive works fine, I think I just haven't dealt with these older drives in a while so I'm not used to it. The right drive has an issue with ejecting. You drag the floppy to the trash and nothing happens, the computer freezes, the drive makes a few sounds of the disk spinning, then the floppy disappears off the desktop but no motor is heard. Gears are fine. Anyone ever have that happen before? I've never heard of one of these eject motors failing. Luckily I do have a parts drive if I need a new one. I can manually eject just fine, its not jammed or anything.

 

[cheesestraws]

I've never heard of one of these eject motors failing

I have had a motor fail before. They're not immune to it: it's just that they're usually fairly reliable. I think this is why that eject gear is made of a weaker plastic than the others: it's kind of like a mechanical fuse, so if the motor is in danger of burning out because the mechanism has seized, the gear will break before the motor does, which is a cheaper part... (this is conjecture, but one I'm moderately confident in)

This is, incidentally, something to bear in mind when replacing those gears: the replacement gears are a very good thing, but bear in mind that they're stronger than the original, generally, which is not the unambiguously good thing some people think it is.

 

[Johnnya101]

That's definitely the reason why its weaker. I know 3D flexible filament is made, but not sure a flexible resin is made. That would make it an exact clone.

Guess I'll swap in that spare motor when I can in the next day or two.

 

[cheesestraws]

That's definitely the reason why its weaker. I know 3D flexible filament is made, but not sure a flexible resin is made. That would make it an exact clone.

Agreed, it would be nice to have a slightly weaker clone! (Not a phrase one says often, right?)