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Color Classic floppy needs a rebuild- gears?

mraroid

mraroid

6502
Hi...

One of my color classics has a bad floppy drive.  I saw some videos on You Tube about rebuilding a floppy drive, but they were for a floppy drive in an earlier Mac, not the Color Classic.

Anyone know of a video that shows the rebuilding of a floppy drive from a Color Classic?  Are folks still making the gears in a 3D printer?  Anyone know where I can buy the gears?  As long as I am rebuilding it, even if my gears are OK, I thought that as long as I am into it, I should put 2 new gears in.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance for the advice and help.

mraroid

 
The gears are for sale on eBay from multiple sellers for around $10 for a couple gears. Search for Macintosh floppy drive gears. (I believe the color classic drive is quite similar to the earlier FDHD drives, but it’s been a while since I’ve had one personally.)

 
I see that someone just offered 1.44K gears.  They are in Australia and I am in the US:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Macintosh-800K-1-44MB-Replacement-Floppy-Drive-Eject-Gear-MFD-75W-MFD-51W/223654181497?hash=item3412d3fa79:g:0hwAAOSw5ZVdc0Av

That looks like the ones I need (?)  The others say 4X, 2X, etc.  I do not know which ones to buy.  They say they are for a 512K floppy drive.  Are you saying some of the 512 gears will work in my floppy drive?  Which one do you suggest?

mraroid

 
2x, 4x etc is telling you how many gears you will get. Any of these gears you find on eBay should work. The Eject gears didn’t change across the many generations of early Mac floppy drives. 

 
I have a bunch of gears from shpaeways which work great in all the older drives. I recently serviced several color classic drives and found that they do not fit! The color classic gear hole/shaft is a bit smaller and has a different number of teeth so the replacement gear just wobbles around and doesn't mate correctly. The same replacement gear works fine in all of the older drives. Anyone know if there's a shapeways file for this other size?

colorclassicejectgear.jpeg

 
Last edited by a moderator:
The Shapeways gears are designed for the 800k/1.44MB auto-inject floppy drives, whereas the drive used in the Color classic is, from what I can tell, a manual-inject drive, for which the Shapeways gears won't work.

The manual-inject drives are much more common, having been used on many late-model 68k Macs and all Power Macs up to and including the beige G3, so perhaps it'd be simpler to find a replacement drive?

That being said, these won't be common forever, so maybe we should start considering getting replacement gears made for them too?

c

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank you, I stand corrected, I saw “SuperDrive” and forgot the cc’s had the newer, non-auto-inject flavor. 

 
Are they plug and play in a CC LaPorta? I am running 7.6.2 and can also boot to 8.1. Do they need to be rebuilt?  If the gears are OK (Do they even have gears?) has the drive been taken apart, all the hair and gunk cleaned out and then given a bit of lube?

I am interested.  Do you have any Sony brands?

I can use standard USPS slow mail as I am trying to save some money. Priority is not important to me unless it is cheaper....  I am in Salem Oregon 97301

Thanks

mraroid

 
I have never seen a color classic use a manual inject drive. All the ones I have seen including my own use standard auto-inject mechanisms. 

Not sure where this got caught up in the conversational train? 

Its possible the drive you have is a different revision. Things change all the time in production runs. 

 
Thank you techknight. 

I have a CC, but the floppy drive is not working.  I wanted to look on You Tube for videos on how to rebuild it.  I see that people have 3D printed gears, but did not know if my CC floppy drive had gears in it or not.  I thought I would start with just taking it apart, cleaning out all the gunk and hair, lube it and see if it worked. 

Do you know of any you tube videos on taking apart the CC floppy drive?  If not, maybe a web site?

I would also be happy to buy a floppy drive from someone if it was working, or only needed a cleaning and lube.

Can you refer me to a web site or you tube video on how to take mine apart?

Thanks

mraroid

 
@mraroid FWIW, the gears on the CC drives I serviced were fine and they were able to be cleaned and greased like other older SuperDrives without issue. It would be nice to get a replacement gear design for that revision of the drive for the future though.

 
mraroid said:
Thank you techknight. 

I have a CC, but the floppy drive is not working.  I wanted to look on You Tube for videos on how to rebuild it.  I see that people have 3D printed gears, but did not know if my CC floppy drive had gears in it or not.  I thought I would start with just taking it apart, cleaning out all the gunk and hair, lube it and see if it worked. 

Do you know of any you tube videos on taking apart the CC floppy drive?  If not, maybe a web site?

I would also be happy to buy a floppy drive from someone if it was working, or only needed a cleaning and lube.

Can you refer me to a web site or you tube video on how to take mine apart?

Thanks

mraroid
Click to expand...
The floppy drive in my CC is the same exact drive thats in the SE/30, LC, etc. 

 
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