400K diskette drive problems

[max1227]

Hi all,

I recently got hold of an external 400K disk drive that isn't working properly. It had problems accepting and ejecting a disk which are now all sorted, however, it only reads disks it formats?? So if I take a good known working 400K disk it won't read it, but if I format it using the drive it will then read it just fine. Likewise if I format a disk in this 400K drive and try to read it in another, it says it is unreadable.

The pressure pad is missing but I made my own which seems to work well.

Any ideas?

Regards,

Max

 

[Macdrone]

Different alignments in the heads has been talked about before.  That would cause them to have issues from machine to machine.

 

[max1227]

How should I go about repairing it?

 

[Macdrone]

I have not done much re alignment.  You would have to ask someone who does more of it or search here, or the rest of the internet.  At this point all this 30 year old stuff may take alot of work.  Its why people have made SCSI to sd converters to replace hard drives and the floppy emu to replace floppy drive/HD20 hard disks.

 

[tanaquil]

Yes, that sounds like an alignment problem. I hope someone can answer your question, because I'd like to learn how to fix alignment, and have had no luck learning specifics so far.

I love my floppy emu, but I like to keep the old hardware working, too.

 

[techknight]

adjust the stepper motor rotation with a known good disk until it works. 

 

[tanaquil]

How do you adjust the stepper motor rotation? Physically move it?