Macintosh SE FDHD Floppy Drive failure

[Themk]

Hi all, My Macintosh SE FDHD's floppy drive has been acting a little strange recently. When accessing the floppy drive, or using it to boot a System disk, it will occasionally make what kinda sounds like knocking. Sometimes it will do it continuously and the only way to stop it is to use the power switch on the Mac. My guess is there is a specific component that needs to be repaired in the floppy drive, but I am not quite sure which component it is. I would appreciate any insight you might have into remedying this situation. I have attached some videos of the problem.

http://themarshallk.com/img/MacSE-ContinuousKnock.mp4

http://themarshallk.com/img/MacSE-FloppyKnock.mp4

Thanks,

TheMK

 

[just.in.time]

Hard to tell, but it almost looks like the disk isn't injected 100% of the way. Does it do this with every floppy disk, or just the yellow one in the videos?

If it is happening with other disks as well, I'd reccomend cleaning and relubricating the disk drive. There are instructions on this site's wiki

 

[Themk]

Yes it does it with other floppy disks. I did, however, initialize a double density 800k disk and copy system 6 off my hard drive to it. I was able to boot that floppy with out any problems. As far as the injection of the disk goes, it seems to inject okay, though it might be sitting a little bit high. You can definitely hear the snap sound as the floppy gets injected.

Thanks,

TheMK

 

[Themk]

I had problems with that same 800k floppy I mentioned in the last post, as well as some other disks I tried. I compared the injection on the Mac's floppy drive with my cleaned and lubricated Apple 3.5 Drive (an external drive for the IIgs) and the injection seemed about the same.

 

[just.in.time]

Have the drive heads been cleaned with cotton and some rubbing alcohol? Might just be dirty heads. Caution: don't bend the drive heads too much, this could permanently wreck the drive. I'm sure you already know this.

 

[Themk]

I got some white lithium grease today, Ill give it a good clean and lubrication tomorrow. Lets hope that solves the issue. :b&w:

In the time I did have today, I disassembled the drive, nothing looks too terribly wrecked.

 

[Themk]

I think we can call this a success! My guess is it was probably just dirty heads, but that was a good excuse to do the whole lubrication and cleaning procedure. I tried both 800K and 1.44M disks, both seem to read great. After cleaning the drive, it gives new meaning to auto inject. Those disks really just slam in there!

Thanks for helping!

 

[just.in.time]

Glad to hear the drive lives again