joe lobocki wrote: I'd try to repair it first... see: http://lisafaq.sunder.net/lisafaq-hw-floppy_lube.html There probably are other instructions on the web as well. Note that the above is for 400K floppies, which should be very similar, but be aware that the stuff about "felt" on the top of the drive arm isn't going to apply as you'd have a real read/write head there instead. :-)

but right Have you tried cleaning the heads with a cotton bud dipped in propan-2-ol? [It may sound obvious, but I once spent an afternoon chasing up and down the analogue board ina a Commodore 8250LP, only to find the reason for the low-amplitude read signal was dirty heads...] -tony

If you carefully move the heads towards the spindle with the machine turned off (you can tilt the head assembly to free it from the leadscrew), do they go back to cylinder 0 when you turn the machine on and/or insert a disk (I am not sure when an Apple would do this)?

see, its not a matter of not going in or coming out, it does that fine, but when i put the floppy in, it barely reads, and a second later spits it right back out and gives me the X disk icon. what exactly does the floppy need to be a bootable system disk? On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 9:07 AM, Ray Arachelian <ray at arachelian.com> wrote: > joe lobocki wrote: > >> hello, >> anybody know where I can get an 800k drive for my mac SE? mine seems to >> have >> quit working. thanks >> -Joe >> >> >> > I'd try to repair it first... see: > http://lisafaq.sunder.net/lisafaq-hw-floppy_lube.html > > There probably are other instructions on the web as well. Note that the > above is for 400K floppies, which should be very similar, but be aware > that > the stuff about "felt" on the top of the drive arm isn't going to apply > as > you'd have a real read/write head there instead. :-) >