Floppy drive questions

[Amiduffer]

I'm confused a little about the floppy drive in my A3000D. The one I've been using all this time is a Chinon FB-357A which is a HD floppy drive. It hasn't been working very reliably though, and thought I would use the floppy drive in my spare, which I found out is a Chinon FB-354 880k type. But it doesn't seem to work. Inserting a disk will just get "uninitialized" no matter what disk you insert. The jumper is set on the two lower right pins.

All this time, I thought that the FB-357A was an 880k since it never gave me the choice of formating at 1.44. How in heck do you turn on that feature? Also, how do you prevent it from randomly spinning while there's a disk in the drive? I tried cleaning it, and depressing the detection pins a few times, but that didn't work.

[ceaser]

the FB-354 i think is standard A500 drive.  So FB-357 also has 2 little "detection pins?"  Problem I had to fix on A500 internal was somehow 1 of the detection pins was off to the side.  It was a small delicate job and I used a needle nose pliers but could've used a tweezers to bend it carefully back to being straight enough to go back in.  And fortunately it was in far enough and I don't have to replace the drive right now, although I'm sort of scanning for a FB-354 to replace it.  If it's like FB-354 then it has 2 not 1 detection pins and if you did everything you could with making sure they have proper action then that's all you can do.  Make absolutely sure that the drive reacts accordingly when you push them down though, one at a time, with no disk in.  Make sure it spins only when I don't remember if it's one of them down or both, but just make sure of that.  If it's not reacting like there's a disk in it when you push them down, then they're not hitting the contacts.  I bet you tried this though.  But I have to say this because that's how my FB-354 behaved when 1 pin was out of it's path it was twisted to the side so only 1 out of 2 sensor contacts was actually being contacted, and the disk spun spun spun constantly like you say.

[clint]

@ All

Talking about floppy drives, has anyone got this working with OS4.1. If so what do you need to do to make it work?

Regards
clint

[Jope]

If you have checked, and the pins are straight, another common problem with these chinon drives is, that the little detector switches gunk up over the years and start misbehaving.

There are three such switches in a HD drive and two in a DD drive.

They can be opened up and cleaned, but you must be very careful when separating it, as there are small bits of metal + a spring inside.

The reason it spins the disk randomly is, that the disk detection pin is making intermittent contact. It is the one that is behind the write protect detector when you look in through the front opening of the drive.

I don't really have any advice on how to proceed with cleaning them - open it up, clean it, reassemble. However the parts are really small and spring loaded, and you need good nerves.. :-)

[beller]

I recently had issues with the 880k drive in my A3000.  It was caused by the sensor switch getting gunked up with years of grunge.  I took the A3000 case off and blew out the drive's visible gunk with some canned air.  I then took a q-tip and alchol and GENTLY swabbed the sensor.  The drive came back to life and has been working fine since.

Hope this helps!
Bob

[nishtek]

I suggest spray cleaning insides, sensor switches.  NO DUST/DIRT.  If this fails it's possible the drive is out of alignment.   All drives are fixable.  We fix these drives and bring many back to life!   Other than that, no specific tips, just be very patient and the more you do it (like us) the more experienced you get.   If interested in our repair service pm.

[Matt_H]

A huge percentage of my drives need to have their disk-detect sensors scrubbed. I've popped the drives open several times for a general dusting, but I've never been able to identify the sensors. Could someone please post a photo next time they have one open?

[new2amga]

My A600 Floppy stopped recognizing floppies just recently too.  Also on my A3000 when I run any games from floppy they seem to skip when there are sound effects, but games run from the hard drive appear to work fine so far.  I don't have a lot of games, so I cannot make a full result on that as only 3 of my games are HD installable.

-edit- Sorry made some changes to make my post easier to read.

Nathan

[delshay]

iv a external HD floppy drive which works in both modes 880k & 1.44 regardless of what OS is being used,so it works also under OS4.0

iv also yet to test the internal HD drive,will post results when iv more time.

one advice i can give is that if you have a HD drive which was working in both modes & then starts to give read/write errors which may be down to faulty read/write heads is to buy another drive of almost the same type & change over the PCB to the new drive as sometimes the fittings of the PCB is the same.

this will give you new read/write heads & keep your HD mode on the floppy drive.

i also notice that some rare floppy drive can also have motorize eject,you just have to know how to enable it and find the right parts.

[nishtek]

@Matt_H

Even if you clean them (sensor switches, read/write head mechanism), you may still need to align the drive.  And with some, circuitry may also fail.