My massive floppy drive

[Gebrochen]

My 5 1/4" floppy drive has een playing up, that I couldnt use it for the last 2 weeks, (NO NOT THE ONE IN THE A1060)

It was custommade by a guy, and read df0/1 and my second one read df2.

Anyway, I opened them up, and have now eventually found a funny system to Copy the big disks, onto the smaller 3 1/2" disks.

My question is, there was this little square aluminium box, ontop of some valcrow?? or something, and was wondering, how it was actually meant to sit on there more permanantly, as currently I am having to(per disk change for copying) take off the cover, before taking disk out, place the aluminium (tiny) half open box/cube thing back into place, then take disk out, before doing the whole procedure again.

So, far, by doing this system, ive managed to copy about 100 or 150 disks with games on them(selective) but now (for the last 5 games)while using xcopy, it seems there are a lot of blue zeros happening, instead of green, this is BAD, as the dsks being copid(I believe) are fine. Hence, is it maybe that the big disk reader, need oil? alcohol? or something on the little valcrow type tab??

I know, lot of words to try and explain this, but a had a younger friend pop over, and he seemed impressed about how Ive gone about the problem, but, I dont think he realises, if I actually had more knowledge on the big disk drives, I wouldve already fixed it instead of all this free exercise of getting up, taking cover off, etc.

If anybody knows, write something, and no, It isnt like the standard big Floppy drives either, trust me on this, I have a standard big one in the A1060, and that is also screewed beyond repair.

Anyway, cheers.

I apologise in advance for the massive words to try and explain this. :-(

[da9000]

Post some photos...

I can vaguely recall an aluminum piece like you describe. I think all it is is a cap (or dust protector?) for the head assembly. Not 100% sure though without photos.

Good luck

[Gebrochen]

This is an external shot of the main BigFloppy drive of the two drives.



This is visible of the little aluminium box sitting ontop of the Floppy Drive internals, check out where the black valcrow is, next image this same valcrow type thing wil be covered with the little aluminium block, that also has valcro stuff inside of it.



So, any ideas of how to get it stuck on there again, not to come off for a while, while loading things or taking floppys out?? Im thinking it may have had alcohol or something??

[a4k-oerx]

I had exactly the same problem with an external 5,25" drive some weeks ago when I went through a batch of old disks.

That small box became loose and the drive had problems with reading disks and positioning the head.

I thought about re-fitting the part, but after I moved the head carefully a bit back and forth the drive was able to read my disks again, not to write = format them though.

I decided to keep it that way to get a backup of my data and "trash" the drive afterwards. Will give it to a german guy who collects demos/intros for kestra.exotica.org.uk so he can go through all my disks and get interesting things out of them.

PS. You have to upload the pictures to some webserver, otherwise only you can see them because the are read from your local disk.

[pixie]

@Gebrochen:
you should post the image online otherwise you may be the only one seeing it


* try flickr