Fooling with floppy drives

From: Steve Robertson <steverob_at_hotoffice.com>
Date: Thu Apr 8 16:32:56 1999

> I recently got a IIci (nice machine!) and it works great, but there seems
to be
> a drive alignment problem. disks formatted on the cx wont always read
right
> on the IIci. seems that i have to use one external floppy between both
macs
> in order to get 800k disks to be read reliably. grrr.
>

To me, that is the most frustrating problem. I've got drives that only work
with certain disks, disks that only work with certain drives, drives that
only format certain densities. Grrr... I guess it could be that both
components (disk and drive) are slightly out of tolerance.

The end result is, I've got a stack of drives and don't really know if
they're good or not.

I've had some success by just cleaning the slides and positioning
mechanisms. The lubricants really attract the dust and will inhibit
movement of the heads. I generally like to use alcohol or another common
agent to remove the gunk. Blue Rain works great but, is kinda expensive.

You have to be careful not to wash all the lubricant out of the servo
bushings. Without any lubrication, they can wear out pretty fast.
Especially the spindle motors. I generally use a fine machine oil to
lubricate the moving parts. You can also use a very thin coat of vasoline.
At least it stays where you put it.

I've never used the DYSAN alignment disks and would be really interested to
learn more about them.

How effective are they?
What other tools do you need?
How much do they cost?


Steve Robertson - <steverob_at_hotoffice.com>
Received on Thu Apr 08 1999 - 16:32:56 BST