(begin quote)
I know a proprietor of a computer repair shop who is a friend of a
a technician who used to earn a living at re-aligning floppy drives.
He said that the job required extensive training and very expensive
equipment. A very high level of mechanical skill is required to perform
the critical adjustments and measurements. He says that it is not a
cost-effective proposition to re-align a floppy drive if you can buy a
new replacement for less than $100. Back in the early 1980s a
replacement floppy drive used to cost around $200 or more. I don't think
they make them as good as they used to. I have some very old and big
high profile 5.25" 360K floppy drives that work much more reliably than
some that are from a much more recent vintage.
Sam Heywood
(end of quote)
Naturally it wouldn't be cost-effective to realign a 3.5" 1.44 MB drive, but
maybe with 5.25" drives, since replacements are difficult or impossible to find.
My 5.25" drive is no longer working, and I have some data I would like to
rescue, though the great majority of my data on 5.25" diskettes is outdated. I
would need 1.2 MB drive, not 360K. I don't really know for sure the drive went
bad, maybe it's the cable or controller. If the drive is bad, I wouldn't know
if it was bad alignment. How many people still use 5.25" 360K drives?
Now you can get LS-120 Superdisk drive for $100, which can read/write more
traditional 3.5" diskettes as well as 120 MB LS-120s. I am wondering if such a
drive is worthwhile for a new computer.
