Rebuilding Floppy Drives

[bunnspecial]

I have a couple of floppy drives on 68K Macs that are pretty well dead. They spin, but seem to have trouble with advancing the head and especially with ejecting disks(although I can eject manually fine).

From what I've read/understand these drives probably need to be disassembled, cleaned, and regreased.

All that I have are 1.44mb "Superdrives" and are the auto-inject kind.

I am a watchmaker so have no issues dealing with small parts and fiddly operations, but also don't want to tear into these without some sort of guide as to what to do/what not to do.

I've tried Google, but it has failed me on this task. Can anyone point me to an online guide with a tear-down or just general instructions on how to rebuild one of these drives?

Thanks in advance.

 

[MacTech68]

Check this thread for some pointers:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1354182/

Within that thread is also a link to the 68KMLA wiki also has a good procedure for removing the disk sled.

Just be very careful NOT to lift the top head too high. There is a spring that regulates the top head pressure and it's easy to stretch if you lift the head too high.

Both the above thread and the 68KLMA link should cover most common issues with rebuilding these drives successfully.

 

[bunnspecial]

Thanks! I'll try to go through one of mine tonight and see if I can get somewhere.

Fortunately, I do have a cleaning disk, so as long as I can get the drive to insert/eject/spin correctly I should be able to clean the heads while avoiding the pitfalls mentioned in that thread.

 

[MacTech68]

I might suggest ye-olde "TechTool" 'lite' edition.

It has a great little head exerciser that you can use for cleaning disks. It not only runs the drive for longer but moves the head back and forth, giving it a nice little 'polish'.

The link for it is in that thread, but here it is:

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/techtool-121

 

[MacTech68]

Just curious as to how your rebuild went.

 

[bunnspecial]

Sorry to not update.

I did some work on the drive in my Quadra, which was caked with dust. I did a partial tear-down. The drive will manually insert and eject okay, but it seems to be "dead" in the sense that it won't spin or really do anything else.

Is there a way to power these on the bench without them being in the computer?