a500 floppy drive of doom!

[Generale]

Hey everyone. I'm back!

My poor A500 had a problem with its floppy drive. It has a tendency to carve concentric rings into floppy disk surfaces.

This has been since a contaminated disk was sent through the drive.

I finally got a drive cleaner a few days ago. I've sent it through quite a few times now. I'm not sure if it has made any difference.

Anyhow, what I want to ask is this;

If there are rings worn into the disks at specific points instead of general scratching, what does that mean? Is it contamination in the runner for the head, or the wor gear or something?

[Chain]

its hard to say, just disasemble whole driwe an you will see

[Zac67]

There may be just a larger piece of dirt on one of the heads, scratching the disks. More probably one of the heads is torn off its suspension, esp. when the scratches appear on the upper side of the disk.
You can use a flashlight to look into the drive; you should be able to see either dirt or torn head. In any case the drive needs to be taken apart to see whether the heads are still OK.

[Generale]

I agree. disassembly wil reveal all.

As for the head being ripped off the suspension, wouldn't that stop the drive from reading things correctly?
Oddly enough it still reads not a problem. It just tends to grind away a few thin rings of the disk in a couple of minutes. I *may* have fixed the problem with the disk drive cleaner. I'll make a sacrificial disk to find out.

Next job, to find out what keeps going wrong when I try to play a game.

[Zac67]

If the drive still reads the heads can't be loose, so all is not lost.  :-) Those drive cleaning disks haven't worked well for me in the past though (it's 'wet' cleaning I hope, dry cleaning is for the birds).

Cleaning the heads is rather easy: remove the 2-4 screws that hold the top of the drive and gently remove it. You can see the heads; the upper one can be lifted some. Just use a cotton swab with isopropylic alcohol to carefully remove any dirt you can see. I've even used a finger nail to remove bad dirt, just don't use metal tools or you'll easily scratch the head.

Maybe there are even scratches on the head, caused by badly beaten up disks, loose shutter parts & springs - then you're probably out of luck.

[KThunder]

yeah rip it apart dude :hammer:
someone here on amiga.org was selling amiga floppy drives for a decent price if you cant fix it.
i cant remeber right off who had them though