Killed my SE/30 floppy drive

[BadGoldEagle]

Hi all

I misaligned the floppy drive bay inside the SE/30 and some disk got stuck because it couldn't get out through the floppy slot on the bezel.

It made some pretty bad noises as you'd expect but I quickly turned the machine off. I took the floppy drive out and the mechanism is fine. No problem with that. While I had it out, it tested it with the machine and it wouldn't work. The motor does nothing, it just sits there. If you insert a floppy nothing will happen.

I couldn't find anything on 68kmla relating to this problem. 

I'm afraid the stepper motor died. Any ideas?

 

[DragonKid]

How did you connect the drive outside the case?  The FDD cable on an SE/30 is pretty short.  It doesn't seem that likely to me that just trying to eject a floppy and failing would kill the drive altogether.  I could maybe see it damaging the eject motor, but in that case the drive should load a disk and otherwise work, just not eject disks.  One possibility is that something happened to the microswitches at the front of the drive that sense the presence of a disk.  If you look at the front of the drive, they are the little black boxes with lighter colored plastic 'sticks' sticking out of the top visible underneath the tray the disk slides into.  I'd check that the sticks move up and down freely, check that the solder joints to the switches look OK, and if you have some electrical contact cleaner (Something like Deoxit or CRC QD, not TV tuner cleaner, which contains machine oil and will make a big mess) spray some into each switch and press the switches a few times.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Yes the FDD cable is indeed very short but mine's long enough to connect the drive to the mobo when it's outside the machine.

I had a look at the 3 switches. They move up and down freely when I use my finger but when I insert a disk they do not touch it.

The switch on the left checks that the disk is not write-protected. If it is, the little black tab on the floppy pushes the switch down. 

On the right hand side of the drive, there are two switches. One of them is not as tall as the other. Odd?

The last one (far right) is the one which tells the drive which type of floppy is inserted.

I don't know why the switches don't move when I insert a floppy because the mechanism seems to work, it lowers the floppy but not low enough?

I noticed one more thing: the head on the top of the floppy drive does not touch the floppy. About 1.5mm between the head and the disk surface.

 

[DragonKid]

Yeah, that 'middle' switch that's shorter should touch the bottom of the metal carriage the disk goes into.  To me it sounds like the disk carriage isn't going down all the way, probably time to clean and grease the drive.  If you look on the side of the drive you should see two little metal roller wheels, the back ones are in a long U shaped track, the front ones ride in a ramp shape stamped into the side of the drive.  When a disk goes in, that back roller that's in the U shaped track should go almost all the way down to the bottom of the U.  If it doesn't, it's not fully loading the disk.

Another possibility is that somehow the eject motor got stuck in some halfway position and isn't letting the carriage go all the way down.  You can lift out the entire eject motor mechanism by removing the 2 black phillips head screws that go into the black plastic frame it's on (The eject motor mechanism ls the thing in the back right of the drive, next to the stepper motor, probably marked "Omron R2DG-38" with a small PCB next to it).

 

[bibilit]

I noticed one more thing: the head on the top of the floppy drive does not touch the floppy. About 1.5mm between the head and the disk surface.

That's one of your problem, both heads should be in contact with the disk.

The 1.44 Mb floppy drives are pretty easy to dismantle,once the disk carriage is in the bottom position, remove the black plastic part (by lifting the small tab) which moves the upper head up and down.

Both heads should be in contact, if not something got jammed in the process.

 

[techknight]

if you bend the spring that holds the head itself to the actuator arm, so its not sitting straight, its game over. youll have a cylinder misalignment and itll never be right again. 

The rear spring though if it holds the arm, is fine, you can bend that back down. But the head spring itself is a no no. 

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Thank you guys I'll have a closer look at the drive next week end. So the mechanism wasn't ok as it turns out... Should have known, when I pushed the disk all the way in it would still stick out.

DragonKid, I don't have the drive with me right now, but IIRC the stepper motor screw was only halfway when the disk was fully inserted. That may be one of the problems. 

But I'll try removing the motor and the eject mechanism next week. I'll let you know.

Biblit, yeah I heard they're easier to deal with than 400k drives. I'll have to get the mechanism in the bottom position first.

techknight, I really hope the head spring wasn't stretched. But didn't anyone find any info on that spring? I mean you can have any spring made to your custom specifications right?

 

[DragonKid]

That's one of your problem, both heads should be in contact with the disk.

The 1.44 Mb floppy drives are pretty easy to dismantle,once the disk carriage is in the bottom position, remove the black plastic part (by lifting the small tab) which moves the upper head up and down.

Both heads should be in contact, if not something got jammed in the process.

If the disk isn't going all the way down, the top head won't necessarily touch the disk.  If the head actually got bent up somehow, he probably has a nice paperweight though - I'm not sure how to align heads on one of these drives, and if the alignment between top and bottom is off as opposed to just the track 0 position being off, that'd be a real bear to fix.

 

[CC_333]

I don't mean to hijack, but....

I don't understand. If the leaf spring the upper head is attached to gets bent upward, it can generally be bent back and the drive will work like before, correct?* Also, I've removed and reinstalled stepper motors on the 800k and 1.4MB drives all the time, often with no regard to their original position, and it never seems to mess with their alignment (they read disk created on known good drives just fine). Am I just lucky?

c

*There seems to be this other little spring that the head itself is suspended in. Is this the one you're referring to?

 

[techknight]

I don't mean to hijack, but....

I don't understand. If the leaf spring the upper head is attached to gets bent upward, it can generally be bent back and the drive will work like before, correct?* Also, I've removed and reinstalled stepper motors on the 800k and 1.4MB drives all the time, often with no regard to their original position, and it never seems to mess with their alignment (they read disk created on known good drives just fine). Am I just lucky?

c

I am referring to a different spring. 

I thought i was pretty clear in my post? 

 

[CC_333]

Yeah, I thought about it and what you said earlier does make sense. OK.

Incidentally, today I refurbed this very same type of drive (auto inject SuperDrive from an SE/30), and it wasn't reading any disks. Turns out the head was not being held firmly against the disk because the little spring that holds the two heads together got stretched out a bit from being held open for probably years, so I readjusted it by moving it up a couple notches, and the drive works fine now.

So, check that spring out and see if moving it up a notch or two solves the problem (instructions on how to do this are somewhere on the forum; can't remember where).

c

 

[techknight]

Yea, well its the head spring itself that is critical. Not the actuator spring. 

As far as the actuator spring is concerned, I have dicked around with those before to get drives working. But if the head spring gets bent or something, thats it... 

 

[CC_333]

Right.

So that little spring back there is called the actuator spring? Interesting!

c