Mac Plus External Drive Problem

[anny84]

Hi,

I've a trouble on my external disk drive (model #M0131) in my MacPlus. It normally reads and writes all 800k floppy disks, but is not able to eject them anymore... a strange noise trying to lift disc but the head come back to the normal position.

I opened the drive and extract mechanism so I can eject disk by pulling to the right as it was a pc drive.

What could I do?

Thanks in advance.

Anny

 

[equill]

Is (are) the shutters of your floppy disk(s) working correctly, ie freely? It may be time to rewrite your frequently-used floppies to new diskettes. Failing that, it may be that your drive needs cleaning and re-lubricating. You puzzle me, however, with the statement that a PC drive has been handling the requirements of Mac 800kB diskettes. Or do you mean that a formerly internal drive was transferred to the external case?

de

 

[anny84]

The trouble are not the diskettes. I will try to explain better, even if my english is not so good.

The drive is a real external 800K disk drive, I used it since some month ago. I kept the Mac Plus safe without using for some month. When I turned it on today, the system tried to boot from hard disk and gave an error. So I disconnected the external drive, and I see the hard disk systems normally boot. So, I thought, the drive has a trouble.

I checked the external floppy by watching thru the floppy hole: and I noticed: I forgot a floppy in the drive!. But the floppy should be eject by the system, and was not ejected. Maybe - I guessed - the disk was blocked by something.

Anyway, I opened the drive and ejected the floppy manually (to the right, there's a way to pull on an iron block and eject the floppy). I closed the drive again, connected to Mac and booted the system. Then I put another floppy and formatted it. But when I put my floppy icon in the trashcan the drive made a short engine noise, doesn't eject the disk and the icon floppy appears again on the desktop.

Anny

 

[equill]

Your problem is a little easier to grasp, now. You need not apologize for your English because it was the scope of the problem that was not clear.

If your M0131 is like mine, there is a circular hole in the body of the drive's enclosure at the right-hand end of the slot for insertion of a diskette. Manual ejection of diskettes is to be achieved by inserting a straightened paperclip into that hole, and then pressing with the clip until that same piece of metal moves inwards to raise and eject the diskette. This is preferably done while the Mac is switched off. It reads as if you identified the correct lever, but did not know how to activate it manually.

If at present, when you try to eject a floppy diskette using software control of the disk drive, the diskette is not ejected, it may be because you have confused the drive by trying to eject a diskette while the Mac was active. See whether you can eject the diskette with a paperclip before you start up the Plus. If that is successful, then try to eject a diskette again with the software while the Plus is booted. If that fails, the drive may be damaged.

de

 

[Scott Baret]

It sounds like it may be a broken or damaged eject mechanism.