Amiga 3000(T) Floppy issues

[TjLaZer]

OK I am tired of this problem I am having with my floppy drives.  I guess it's expected for old vintage gear right?

My machine with the problem is my A3000T with two HD Chinon drives.

The issue is the floppy drives have a flakey disk detect switch.  So when a disk is inserted, it will randomly eject and remount the disk.  As you can imaging this poses a problem if you are reading or writing to the disk!  So I take it the disk detect switch is dirty or corroded.  Problem is I tried to clean one and ruined the switch.  So I bought another used HD drive off eBay and this one does the same thing!  So I have both drives that are flakey.  Any ideas?

[TjLaZer]

This is a very common problem with the full height Chinon mechanism.

Basically your options are to either try and squirt contact cleaner into the switch, then move it up and down rapidly in the hope that you'll dislodge some of the gunk..

.. OR unsolder the switch, carefully dismantle it (there WILL be flying springs and parts if you just snap it open), then clean the contacts. Reassembly is in reverse. ;-)

I opt for the latter one, as it's the only way to get the drive to work reliably again, but it is a fiddly task, as you noticed.

I may be interested in buying the one you ruined, if you want to get rid of it.

Thanks for the reply.

I do have the drive with bad switch just sitting around, if you want to buy it send me a PM.  These go for $80+ in working condition.