Troubleshooting a bad Floppy Drive

[smrieck511]

I'm having a specific issue with one of my floppy drives (see attached video). If anybody would know the cause, I would really appreciate the help. Thanks for any insight.

 

[finkmac]

the issue is that disks eject?

 

[smrieck511]

this also may be how it behaves if the top head does not make good contact with the disk… That's my assumption for now as far as the problem

 

[smrieck511]

the issue is that disks eject?

no, that was an attempted and failed format

 

[danny.gonzalez.0861@gmai]

this also may be how it behaves if the top head does not make good contact with the disk… That's my assumption for now as far as the problem

Smrieck might be on to something. When I was cleaning my drive I got up to finish dinner and my daughter pulled up on the top head quite hard.

I never tried it as she left it as I could tell the flat plate spring on the rear of the head was quite deformed. It took a few tries to get it right but it is worth a try. What I did was put a small screwdriver at the back of the head, close to the spring side and then pushed the head (sensor side) down slightly, as to leverage the spring flat again. Mine would seek for a bit and then fail. Admittedly, it was not as fast as yours in ejecting after the failure so I cant be certain if your issue is the same but it definitely is not the eject gear as that seems to work quite well in the video you posted.

I wish I could better describe what I did to fix mine but I will say that the adjustment was minute and does not require a lot of force as I am sure too much force when trying to pry the spring back to proper tension will result in more damage.

Keep us posted and good luck!

 

[smrieck511]

Smrieck might be on to something. When I was cleaning my drive I got up to finish dinner and my daughter pulled up on the top head quite hard.

I never tried it as she left it as I could tell the flat plate spring on the rear of the head was quite deformed. It took a few tries to get it right but it is worth a try. What I did was put a small screwdriver at the back of the head, close to the spring side and then pushed the head (sensor side) down slightly, as to leverage the spring flat again. Mine would seek for a bit and then fail. Admittedly, it was not as fast as yours in ejecting after the failure so I cant be certain if your issue is the same but it definitely is not the eject gear as that seems to work quite well in the video you posted.

I wish I could better describe what I did to fix mine but I will say that the adjustment was minute and does not require a lot of force as I am sure too much force when trying to pry the spring back to proper tension will result in more damage.

Keep us posted and good luck!

thanks! yeah it's still a mystery but if anything else, I'll keep this one for spare parts. I have replaced the eject gears in all my drives.

I know some people recap these. I'm not sure if anybody knows of any failures they could attribute to the capacitors?

 

[smrieck511]

slight progress ...after letting it sit for a few days, now it tries to initialize any inserted floppy… It goes through the formatting process correctly, but when the head is supposed to come back slowly to verify, it doesn't…it goes to re-verifying and eject the disk with initialization failed.

this has been cleaned correctly and lubricated correctly.