Classic Disk Drive Issues

[Scott Baret]

I've got a Classic, affectionately nicknamed "Gimpy" due to her constant problems (hard drive died two years back, had an issue with the speaker), who has a rather strange ailment at present...

The internal floppy drive won't read 800K disks. Just 1.4MB. I've got to use my external 800K drive for the lower-density disks.

I've never in my many years with Macs seen this sort of problem. It's been ongoing for a while now. I thought perhaps a new CMOS battery would solve problems but it didn't.

My only other theory is that it's some sort of capacitor issue since many Classics seem to have that problem. Any ideas?

 

[tomlee59]

First try an experiment: Can the drive format an 800K disk, and then successfully read from it? That is, your problem could be misaligned heads, rather than an 800K vs. 1.4M issue. If the drive can format its own 800K disks, but has trouble reading ones formatted by other drives, then misalignment is almost certainly the culprit.

A good head clean can help also, so if you haven't done that in a long time, I'd do that first.

 

[Charlieman]

Microswitch in the floppy drive stuck or faulty?

 

[tomlee59]

Charlieman's suggestion is a *great* one. If the shaft gets snapped off of the media sense switch (or otherwise fails equivalently), the drive will think that all disks are 1.4M. I've seen this in more than one drive, so a good visual inspection of the switches is a good idea.

 

[Scott Baret]

Good thing I have a spare SuperDrive! I might just replace it, that seems to be the easiest method at this point.