Fixing flakey floppies

Warner Losh imp at bsdimp.com
Tue May 23 19:13:08 CDT 2017


Greetings,

I have three flakey floppies. I wonder if they are worth fixing. Two are
TEAC FD-55FRs. One appears to not report the INDEX mark, the other works
well until around track 35 or so then fails... The third floppy is a 1.2 MB
YD-380. It won't reliably move the head...

I've tried cleaning the heads (which rehabbed a forth drive: a TEAC
FD-55GFR) on these drives a few times. I'm thinking that it's too much
hassle and I should just trash them, at least the YD-380. I have 3 1.2MB
drives that work. The 55FRs are desirable to have working since I can put
them in a Rainbow, but even at ebay prices it isn't worth more than an hour
of my time to rehab.

Before I do that I thought I'd see if there was something simple I can do.

I did all my testing with the kryoflux board on a known-good disk (720k
5.25" drive so it tests both sides at the normal density and tests all 80
tracks w/o using the high density mode so the FRs can read it).

Warner


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