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Life time supply: https://www.amazon.com/MECCANIXITY-M3-5x12-0-6mm-Phillips-Computers-Electronic/dp/B0FMWKTLT2?crid=2SVVHRHT9FOV9&th=1. (Silver, not gold tinted, but you can passivate the metal and get a good color match if it matters) (Disclaimer, I have not bought these, but they match...

Snooper is good for some 68k machines, but MacTest PRO is from Apple and is more thorough. Snooper is easier to run, supports just about all 68k machines, and is decent for burn-in of newly restored boards. MacTest PRO can be complex to set up and you need the specific version for your...

Nice and clean too. On longer jumper wires, I put a dab of conformal coating to secure them in place. On this one, it's short enough that you are fine as it is. Good job. Finding broken traces can be a challenge and takes patience.

I'll say the plastic on this one is amongst the better plastics on all my macs. I wonder if cigarette smoke seals off and preserves this kind of plastic. Probably not. But it would be cool to find at least one thing that justifies the hell we have to go through to clean it off.

It varies. Alconox is a good one (comes in powder form) to get rid of most of what you find on boards, cases, metal parts, etc. There are some better ones to remove solder flux, but Alconox is a decent general purpose cleaner. You do need to rinse boards with distilled water afterward, then...

But you know what... I had to give it a try:

Ai is overrated. That said, I can imagine a few interesting images...

I use an inexpensive Vevor 30L one. You can get it from the usual places. It does not have a few functions nicer ones have, but works just fine.

This poor Classic II showed up as a full-scale biohazard. The previous owner clearly smoked. Their cats clearly smoked. Honestly, everything in that house probably smoked. I had to save it. I tore the machine down to the last Torx screw and loaded my 30L ultrasonic cleaner with anything it...

I tried using a pin vise and a fine file afterward smooth out the contacts on the armature a bit. It's extremely delicate, so either way be careful. It's soft metal, so I would be hesitant to use power tools... if I could. (it didn't fit the chuck on my drill or dremel.)

It 100% does, but this isn't a motor that will get used a lot, and when it does get used, it is only on for around a second. There is always a better way to do it. I just didn't have Emory cloth or sand paper I could cut small enough to fit. Also, the gunk was so solid that it laughed at...

Agreed. They are really delicate. I also tried IPA on the shaft. No luck here. I wonder if it was a different lubricant used in your drive? The one in all of mine was hard and tar-like.

It has a much lower duty cycle than a model train would. I think it's a safe bet that this fix won't last forever, but it can be repeated.

I agree, though in the motors I've worked on, the black contamination was way to thick and hard to go easy on. Perhaps using a drill or lathe and a micro file after would help extend the lifetime of the motor. On the other hand, they duty cycle of the motor nowadays is so low it probably does...

I've had to realign a few Sony 2Mb drives. I use a floppy formatted in a good drive and adjust the optical stop a fraction of a millimeter at a time until the computer mounts the floppy. I've gotten it right the first try, but more often it takes a while. The other outlier is about an hour.

Yeah, I probably should have said it's delicate a few times. Good tips!

You'd need a jeweler's lathe. If I had one, I'd probably use it. Nowadays since the floppy would be used rarely, it probably does not matter.

Probably not. The contamination doesn't look like an oxide. Its more tar-like. Probably the oil breaking down in the sparks from the motor.

Not quite. Though you could probably cross a drive with a nerf gun and have some fun. Probably wouldn't be that good for reading floppies afterward, but it'd get the attention of the user.

Eject motors getting weak over time has been a thing with vintage Macs since... well, since they weren't vintage. I've accumulated a small graveyard of them and finally decided to crack one open and see what was going on. First step: getting in: You have to desolder the tabs (or wires) that...