Mac II - replacement 800k floppy drive

[toshiba1]

I ordered a replacement drive, model APPLE 661-0345

however what I received in mail was:

Sony model MP-F51W-23

My Mac II running 7.1 with this drive cannot read any of my old 800k floppies. See picts.

Does anyone know what the problem is? Did I get the wrong drive?

Thanks very much I hope you can help. I've googled until my fingers hurt

http://home.comcast.net/~currygoat77/IMG_0764.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~currygoat77/IMG_0767.jpg

I should also add that any attempt to initialize a floppy always (no matter what) gives me error that disk is write protected, even if it's not.

 

[tomlee59]

That is indeed an 800K drive.

Some possibilities:

1) You bent a connector pin when reinstalling (or your cable is otherwise defective).

2) Your floppies were written by a functioning, but misaligned, drive. Try reading disks from other sources. Also try formatting a blank disk in the new drive and see if it completes the operation successfully.

3) Your floppies were written correctly, but your new drive needs a head alignment. Again, try formatting a blank disk. If it can do that, your new drive is basically functional. If it's unable to do this, then the drive would seem to be borked.

4) Every floppy you tested is actually bad.

From the fact that it thinks every disk is write protected, it would seem that your new drive has a problem (or the connections to it are messed up). Take a look at the write protect microswitch sensor in the mouth of the drive to make sure that it isn't stuck.

 

[toshiba1]

Thanks for the excellent reply, I will check it in more detail later tonight.

 

[toshiba1]

Yes, the little microswitch sensor which detects write-protected has this little piece of metal missing. So that explains why I couldn't format a floppy. Of course now that my HD is dead, I cannot test formatting a floppy by forceably holding down the switch with a small screwdriver or something.

 

[tomlee59]

If the old floppy drive is available as an organ donor, you could swap microswitches to fix the newer one.

Too bad about the HD. It's frustrating to have to debug several problems simultaneously!

 

[toshiba1]

It's frustrating to have to debug several problems simultaneously!

yes! I got battery dead, floppy dead, HD dead, all at the same time.