Fixing flakey floppies

[Chuck Guzis]

On 05/23/2017 05:40 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> On Tue, 23 May 2017, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote:

> 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.

Caked or dry grease can even occur on NOS drives.  I was unpacking some
new Samsung SFB-321 3.5" drives.   They didn't pass diagnostics.  Popped
them open and the leadscrew grease had turned yellow and caked.  Cleaned
the grease off with some Perc, put a very thin film of silicone grease
on the leadscrew and the drives were good to go.

You can see if you've got an alignment problem if you format a floppy in
the suspected drive and you can read it from end to end without error.

IMD is good for this sort of thing.

--Chuck