Fixing flakey floppies

[Fred Cisin]

On Tue, 23 May 2017, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote:
> 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

In addition to cleaning the heads, look at the parts that slide when the 
head moves.  The old grease is probably in bad shape by now.  With a 
little solvent (WD-40 is NOT a solvent), clean the old grease and re-lube 
them.  I used to use a molybdenum disulfide grease that I had around - I 
have no idea what the "RIGHT" grease would be.

Teac 55s don't often need the radial alignment adjusted, but it could 
happen.  The failure after track 35 could be alignment, but it could also 
be the grease.

When you say "doesn't report index", . . .
in what way?
Many Teac drives use index sensing to determine "drive ready", so there is 
a little more circuitry between the sensor and the interface connector 
than some drives.
Is it complaining about "drive ready" to the controller, . . . 
If you clip on at the index sensor, and manually turn the disk, do you get 
a response as the index hole goes by?  (or use a folded piece of business 
card to block and unblock the sensor without a disk in the drive.


> 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.

If the problem(s) are mechanical, and you end up with another drive that 
has a bad board, or vice versa, you will be glad if you kept the dead 
drives.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com