Installing a modern floppy into an SE/30

[meall]

Hi,

Just as a personal milestone, I want to share one experience I just did!

I had my SE/30 with a failed floppy disk. On another side, I had a Performa 63xx that I had problems with for a while. So, I used this computer has parts. I used the CD drive to put into a performa 6115CD (without a CD) and was left with the other parts.

One of them was the floppy. While my SE/30 case was open, I added memory to it (128 meg!) and attached the floppy of the performa into it, leaving it on the desk for a test. It booted successfully from a 6.0.8 floppy boot disk. So, I realise that this drive was a good replacement part for my SE/30 floppy.

The problem here is the auto-inject part of the drive. Once you install the drive into the SE/30 case as is, the disk slot is just a bit lower than the hole in the SE/30 case. So I pry one of the screw holder in the front so the drive would fit lightly up from the front. And it is working! While inserting a disk into it is a bit more difficult, I have to push a little bit farther into the slot to insert it, the eject is working as if it was an original SE/30 floppy.

So, nothing very spectacular, but that's a way to make an older Mac working as if it was new!

 

[JDW]

I assumed you removed the black "dust door" of the floppy drive before mounting it in your SE/30?

Any photos of your handiwork?

 

[meall]

I assumed you removed the black "dust door" of the floppy drive before mounting it in your SE/30?
Any photos of your handiwork?

No need to remove the black door, it work with it as is.

Obviously I should have taken picture before closing the case, but I did not. Shame on me!

 

[JDW]

I too own an SE/30 and a few years ago I ordered a replacement internal 1.4MB floppy drive. The seller shipped me a newer black-dust-door type drive by accident. They later shipped me a proper replacement (the style made for the SE/30) and I am currently still using that drive. But I never thought that the black-dust-door models would work without problem (injecting and ejecting in the same manner). So I appreciate hearing your story that it works. That's also why I was curious to see your photos so I could do the same in the future, if I ever need to swap out the internal drive again.

 

[meall]

In fact, the trick is very simple:

There is 2 screws that hold the drive in the front. One side of it is in a solid metal enclosure from top to bottom, but the other side is some kind of eyelet that is movable. So I use a grip to force up the enclosure. The trick is to make the eyelet so that it is at the same height as the top metal enclosure. Then I screw the drive in place with only 3 screws well tighten. I could also have make an hole on the other side for another screw, but if you don't force the disk in or out, 3 should be more than enough to maintain it in place.

I'll try to see if I can take picture of it without having to remove all the drive enclosure. But it was quite simple. When I insert the disk in, we can see that the drive is not perfectly horizontal, there is a small inclination to the floppy, but it work quite well!