--- On Thu, 5/24/12, Daniel Pereira <[email protected]> wrote: > I know relaively little about these computers. What is the most > likely problem here? > > I'm thinking a spring or some kind of mechanism needs to be > replaced or bent back into shape, but I don't have the screw drivers > yet to open up the back.
The floppy drives have a bunch of moving mechanical parts in them which have a small amount of grease lubricating them. Over the years that grease dries up and collects dust and fuzz and pet hair and other gunk. The fix is to clean off as much of the old grease as you can and relube it with silicone grease that'll never dry up. The original grease is usually a yellowish color. You can manually operate the disk inject/eject to observe where the movement and grease is. Some drives need the disk motor (not the disk spindle motor) and gearbox removed and cleaned and a small amount of silicone grease put on the gears. A properly operating Mac floppy drive should draw the disk in and eject it smoothly without any struggling, pausing or stopping before the disk is fully in or out. Later models of Macintosh with a large dimple in the middle of the disk slot don't have power inject. Push on the disk and when it's most of the way it'll snap in and down. Those drives have a flap on the slot which is 100% ineffective at keeping out dirt. Somewhere along the line the case stylists didn't communicate with the disk drive engineers to make the flap fully block the slot like any PC floppy drive does. In my experience it's best to remove the plastic dust shield sleeve from Mac floppy drives. I've seen floppy drives packed full of dirt, fuzz and hair because the sleeve that's supposed to keep dirt out of the drive works far better at trapping everything in the drive that comes in through the disk slot. The foam gasket around the cable doesn't seal well enough to totally stop air being drawn through the disk slot, pulling crud with it. Take the sleeve off and the crud gets drawn *through* the drive. Less harmful to have a light scattering of dust on the Mac's insides (which will happen anyway) than allowing the floppy to become a dust bunny colony. -- ----- You received this message because you are a member of the Vintage Macs group. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vintage-macs Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/
