Mac SE/30 Floppy Drive Head Screws... The heads snapped!

[Johnnya101]

Upon trying to remove the head on my drive for degreasing, and adjustment, the two screw heads snapped off the thread.

One is raised a millimeter above the plastic, the other is flush.

Im thinking a dremel. Has anyone had this happen?

 

[Juror22]

I've regreased several SE/30 drives, following the wiki guide, but I have never had to remove or re-adjust the read heads - did you replace something else that required the additional step?

I think that the only way to get the remains drilled out would be to use some kind of drill press, since trying to guide it by hand would be very difficult.  Whether you use a dremel or another rotary tool, there will be a lot of very fine debris that will be very difficult to clean out.

 

[Johnnya101]

I think the drives gone anyways... Head spring was bent and now the screws snapped

.

There's a few drives on eBay. I'm looking at ones with the same model number as mine, but one was made in Japan and was from a plain SE. All are untested...

Worth the risk?

 

[Themk]

Regarding country of manufacture, in my testing there has been no difference between drives assembled in the U.S.A. and drives made in Japan. Assuming you replace it with a high density drive, it should work without any problems. You could even use an 800k double density drive too, but that would be no fun. Now, I don't know what the untested drives are like, they may simply need a cleaning and lubrication, or they may have more serious problems. You take a risk with that, and somebody with more experience than I have would probably be able to help guide you in picking out a drive. Good luck.