Hello everyone, new here but I have been a lurker for some time now.
A few months back after much hunting around I finally found an SE/30 of my very own (as well as two Classics that were part of a set) and had begun work on fixing it off and on. At first the task was intimidating given that its my first time ever doing an SMD Cap repair. That said after some time and patience I was able to accomplish and fix the board!
All was going great (and even the HDD worked surprisingly enough!) However I seem to have an issue with the Floppy drive. The drive has definitely seen better days as it was covered and full of dust and gunk. Despite careful cleaning, application of White lithium grease and extreme carefulness to clean the heads with a swab and alcohol, I get the (mostly consistent) same issue of a Floppy read, Happy Mac and then ejection.
After some time testing some disks eventually one did boot up, however it looked to be a fluke of luck than any consistency. I cannot be too sure if the disks I have are rubbish or if the drive is dead (or worse I missed something on the board). Needless to say the next option I had to my person was to pull out another Floppy drive from one of the Classic Macs I got in part of this collection. This one was in far better condition but despite everything it still produced the same mostly consistent issue of Happy Mac and Ejection.
At this point I am not entirely sure what I can do next on the matter. I have thought about burning some newer images on newer 1.44 disks I have using windows/winimage and see if anything changes. I have even considered looking into an external drive or possibly floppyemu for a workaround. Could it be a string of bad internal floppy drives? Am I doing something wrong here or perhaps there is something on the board I need to investigate?
I am hoping to hear out on any ideas from the community at large. This is one of my first large scale Mac repairs so I have a lot to take in information wise. I hope a solution can be found here!
A few months back after much hunting around I finally found an SE/30 of my very own (as well as two Classics that were part of a set) and had begun work on fixing it off and on. At first the task was intimidating given that its my first time ever doing an SMD Cap repair. That said after some time and patience I was able to accomplish and fix the board!
All was going great (and even the HDD worked surprisingly enough!) However I seem to have an issue with the Floppy drive. The drive has definitely seen better days as it was covered and full of dust and gunk. Despite careful cleaning, application of White lithium grease and extreme carefulness to clean the heads with a swab and alcohol, I get the (mostly consistent) same issue of a Floppy read, Happy Mac and then ejection.
After some time testing some disks eventually one did boot up, however it looked to be a fluke of luck than any consistency. I cannot be too sure if the disks I have are rubbish or if the drive is dead (or worse I missed something on the board). Needless to say the next option I had to my person was to pull out another Floppy drive from one of the Classic Macs I got in part of this collection. This one was in far better condition but despite everything it still produced the same mostly consistent issue of Happy Mac and Ejection.
At this point I am not entirely sure what I can do next on the matter. I have thought about burning some newer images on newer 1.44 disks I have using windows/winimage and see if anything changes. I have even considered looking into an external drive or possibly floppyemu for a workaround. Could it be a string of bad internal floppy drives? Am I doing something wrong here or perhaps there is something on the board I need to investigate?
I am hoping to hear out on any ideas from the community at large. This is one of my first large scale Mac repairs so I have a lot to take in information wise. I hope a solution can be found here!
