Apple Floppy Drives (was: More Apple Pimpers)

The mechanism taken by itself may have been reliable enough, BUT, since there was no track-zero sensor, (I think that's the reason) the "recal" operation rams the head assembly into the outside stops multiple times each time it is performed, and that's going to harm the mechanism. Do that enough times and the system loses alignment, which makes it prone to failure. As the drive changes in radial alignment, the data written with it becomes "off-track" so it will be difficult to read when the drive is realigned or when the diskette is put in a properly aligned drive. The consequences of poor alignment is not an Apple problem, though the Apple way of using the drives causes misalignment more quickly than with drives that sense when track zero has been reached.