I destroyed my floppy drive! :/

[Vaninna]

Hi,

this is really stupid and embarrassing: In order to get rid of "floppy disk is unreadable" and the like messages I pulled out the floppy drive and tried to clean it with isopropyl alcohol. However in order to really reach and clean the "heads" I unscrewed the the top head. Since then I have not been able to put it back in the right spot and thus the errors while reading floppies is way worse.

I suspect that this is beyond my mediocre skills to salvage this drive. But I really hate to throw retro gear away.

I figure maybe I could trade it in while buying a working one, or send it to someone that can help me to repair it or, in worst case, throw it away and buy a new one.

:O

[kipper2k]

it would be a challenging tiresome job to not only align the heads to the track but also line up the upper and lower heads to each other. You can buy a replacement on ebay for a fair price (Airey36 has a good stock normally)

[fryguy]

I think ggsdata.se has new ones too (maybe not that cheap) though.

[Jope]

It's not actually possible to align this with any precision without a special alignment floppy + an oscilloscope. None of the software only alignment solutions are really accurate enough..

[dlfrsilver]

there is actually a way. When you remove the screws of the head mobile part, the screws leave a mark. Once cleaned, you must very carefully reposition the screw marking in position with the screws, then screw them. It should do the trick.

[lesta_smsc]

Failing the above... would it be a cheaper option to convert an old PC floppy disk drive?

[amigasith]

Originally Posted by Vaninna

...or send it to someone that can help me to repair it or, in worst case, throw it away and buy a new one...

Never throw away retro gear I managed to get misaligned drives like this going again a couple of times in the past, even without an oscilloscope. You just need lots of patience I actually do repairs like this just for the fun of doing it, so if you are willing to pay for the postage, I can give it a try (for free - you just pay the postage) What type of drive is it? Chinon FB-354? Some Panasonic?

[h4tt3n]

I had the exact same problem after having replaced the upper head because it was damaged, but I made it work again. I had to repeatedly unscrew and move the head a tiny bit, fasten the screws and try to boot a disk. I think it took more than ten tries to get it right, but now it works.

[Vaninna]

Thanks a lot for all the input! My conclusion is that if I try to repair it I will likely make it worse.I However, to send it to you Amigasith sounds like a plan! I just need to check on the postage.

[amigasith]

Postage back to Sweden would be 8,79 EUR not insured and not tracked and 10,99 EUR insured and tracked

[Vaninna]

What is that postal service you are using? DHL? Padded envelope? I guess I could use the same service from Sweden.

[amigasith]

Originally Posted by Vaninna

What is that postal service you are using? DHL? Padded envelope? I guess I could use the same service from Sweden.

It's DHL "Päckchen" = small parcel.

[Vaninna]

Amigasith, pm me the address to send the drive to! B)

[amigasith]

Cheers, folks! As you could probably tell from the posts above, Vaninna sent me his drive and I now found some time to work on it. Did I say you need some patience for re-adjusting floppy disk drives? Oh boy, I needed lots of patience for this one

My first try to position the head was so successful that it booted into Workbench immediately after. So I thought wo-hooo that was a quick repair. But unfortunately, 2 out of 5 other drives that I tested with floppies written by Vaninna's drive couldn't read them. Also, the game Vroom that he sent me to test the drive didn't load.

After many many tries to re-adjust the head, I almost came to the conclusion that Vroom's track loader causes some problems with this drive. Therefore, I made a sanity check: I put Vaninna's drive in an external drive enclosure and copied Vroom from one of my drives that could read the floppy over to Vaninna's drive. And guess what? It successfully loaded Vroom So I knew that it was still some sort of head mis-alignment.

I had to make a break, since I performed too many re-adjusting tries and my eyes started hurting. But then, tonight, I couldn't resist and gave it one more try With good lighting, I managed to move the head just an incredibly tiny little bit towards the other direction and it started loading Vroom

So I tested quite a few of my floppies (more than 20), both originals and backups, and the drive now successfully loads every single floppy that I tried The ultimate test is, however, to copy a floppy with the repaired drive and see whether other floppy disk drives can load it. It also passed this test The floppies written by Vaninna's drive can be successfully loaded by 5 other drives, so I guess it is fair to say that even if the heads are still a tiny little bit mis-aligned, they are within tolerance.

As usual, here is some hardware pr0n

Here is the drive's head, completely unmounted:



And this is the "magic" position of the head that made it work again:



I also unmounted the stepper motor and cleaned / oiled the spindle:



Same for the rail on which the head moves back and forth:



Finally, assembled the drive back again:



And a close-up of the back side of the drive:



Last but not least a proof that it successfully loads Vroom:



The pink spots that you can see on the drive are nail polish. This fixes the screws in their position so that they don't start moving during drive operation. Sorry for the color but this is more or less the only color that my 2 little girls like, so we only had pink nail polish at home.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I cleaned the heads very thoroughly with IPA of course

Hope you enjoyed the read

[jbenam]

Another act of kindness from the awesome Amiga (or maybe it's just EAB? ) scene.

Great stuff, amigasith! That was a really interesting read

[Vaninna]

Haha, Vroom - the ultimate proof! No more guru meditation!

Yes, I am totally amazed by the kindness delivered by Amigasith. The drive should be happy too: it must have been a long, long time since it was in this good condition.

[dlfrsilver]

As amigasith said, it's tedious, but i think it's fun to do

it happened to me already in the past to re-align some of my drives, and it did lots of good to them.

That's cool of him anyway!

[Zippy Zapp]

Very Nice! Great thread!

[amigasith]

Thanks for the kind words, guys Although it took me quite a while, repairing the drive was pure fun And finally getting it working again really made me feel good - I just love bringing old Amiga stuff back from the dead...

One thing to mention though: I'm not a philanthropist - I was just in the mood of solving a good Amiga problem So don't swamp my Inbox with repair requests. I will let people know when my fingers start itching again

[Zippy Zapp]

Originally Posted by amigasith

I just love bringing old Amiga stuff back from the dead...

+1 to that. Yesterday I finally resolved my dead A2000 so it boots to kickstart again instead of nothing! Working on two A500's too. Junk pile, my foot!