LCII, Performa 456, and empty 800k Floppy Enclosure

[PotatoFi]

I bought some stuff on Craigslist yesterday! He also had a Mac 512k and complete Apple IIc but I decided to leave those. He wanted $600 for everything, I managed $100 for:

• Macintosh LCII, unknown condition. Caps look okay but will be replaced, battery hasn't leaked, has "NO VIDeO" Sharpied on the inside. It appears to be missing a stick of RAM, 
  
• Macintosh Performa 476, unknown condition. Caps look okay, but... you know. Battery, same.
  
• Macintosh 800k floppy drive enclosure. Sadly it's missing the screws and the floppy drive itself. Could I put any standard Macintosh 800k drive in here and be good to go? Anyone know where I could pick up just a drive? If you have any thoughts, let me know.
  

He wasn't going to take less than $150 for all three, until I pointed out that I needed to find a floppy drive, and that "NO VIDeO" was a bad sign - a big gamble for me.

 

[LaPorta]

Nice find there! You can pick up a drive from me, I came upon a whole bunch on my last haul. I have at least one bare 800k that you can throw in there, unless you want to make it a SuperDrive external, for which I have some 1.4 MB ones. You can have it as-is, or I can clean it and test it for you. Send me a PM if interested.

You are lucky: I have never come across one of those smooth-case ones before.

 

[PotatoFi]

Nice find there! You can pick up a drive from me, I came upon a whole bunch on my last haul. I have at least one bare 800k that you can throw in there, unless you want to make it a SuperDrive external, for which I have some 1.4 MB ones. You can have it as-is, or I can clean it and test it for you. Send me a PM if interested.

You are lucky: I have never come across one of those smooth-case ones before.

DM sent! Regarding the "smooth-case", I didn't know they were rare. The "snow white" ones are more common, then?

 

[LaPorta]

I'm not sure if they are rare or not, I simply have only come across the snow white ones in my travels.

 

[bibilit]

I'm not sure if they are rare or not, I simply have only come across the snow white ones in my travels.

Not rare or uncommon Apple produced a great variety of drives

 

[cheesestraws]

I simply have only come across the snow white ones in my travels. 

I think it depended on country to a certain extent.  I have a vague memory that Australia got a lot of flat-fronted LC IIs, but that may be a misunderstanding

 

[PotatoFi]

The other thing I'll need to do is replace the screws. That might be tricky! If anyone happens to know what kind of screws go in the floppy drive, let me know.

 

[olePigeon]

The smooth ones were sold along side the Macintosh Plus.  I don't know if they can be upgraded to a SuperDrive.

 

[bibilit]

I don't know if they can be upgraded to a SuperDrive.

Yes, no problem at all, have upgraded two of them to replace faulty 800k units.

Seen as 800k when used with a Plus or SE, and 1.44 elsewhere.

Even used with a 128k without any issue.

 

[PotatoFi]

Yes, no problem at all, have upgraded two of them to replace faulty 800k units.

 

Seen as 800k when used with a Plus or SE, and 1.44 elsewhere.

Even used with a 128k without any issue.

Awesome. I'm going to target getting a 1.44mb drive for this enclosure then. That will be super handy for copying disks and stuff!

 

[PotatoFi]

The pictures don't really show it, but the 800k drive enclosure was pretty gross.





I did the usual scrubbing: soap and water in the kitchen sink. It turns out that this thing is in basically perfect condition!



Next, I procured a floppy drive. @LaPorta was kind enough to sell me a 1.44 mb SuperDrive! He also skipped his usual maintenance routine on it so I could do it myself. Nothing interesting to say there - tore it down, cleaned it, lubricated everything.

Then, onto installation!



I was missing basically all of the screws, but was thrilled to find that they're all M3's. I have a bunch on hand from building 3D printers over the years. They were mostly too-long, so I 3D printed little spacers to get everything to fit.



No more photos to share... it's a drive! It works! For some reason the eject motor seems to labor a bit on it (I took apart the eject motor gears and lubricated them), but it seems to be getting better every time I eject a disk.

It's super cool to have dual disk drives on a Mac!

 

[LaPorta]

Nice job! I find that each motor differs no matter what: they may be that way from the factory, or have seen different service over their lives. Either way, I recommend removing all gear grease and using the tiniest smear of grease with cotton swab, so thin you can’t even see it. That has yielded my best results.

Ill have a video hopefully not too far in the future!

 

[PotatoFi]

Nice job! I find that each motor differs no matter what: they may be that way from the factory, or have seen different service over their lives. Either way, I recommend removing all gear grease and using the tiniest smear of grease with cotton swab, so thin you can’t even see it. That has yielded my best results.

Ill have a video hopefully not too far in the future!

I'm sure you're right about the motor. I did swab it out with with alcohol and drop some Teflon Silicone Lubricant on it, which is what I do with all of my drives. The gears looked great, actually the whole drive was one of the cleanest I've seen.

Thanks again for hooking me up with it, having an external drive has been on my list for awhile, and having a SuperDrive is the icing on the cake!