--- On Sat, 1/5/13, Miles <[email protected]> wrote: > Am I just doing it wrong, or does the drive need to be replaced? > Thanks for any help.
It needs cleaned and lubed. The drive is easy to remove from the plastic bracket, just held in by a clip. Next remove the cylinder head screws from the sides. Slide off the plastic dust shield if it's still on it. Now you can remove the top cover. It can take a bit of prying with a small, flat screwdriver. Chances are there will be some dust and fuzz inside. I've seen them packed just about full. Once you have that cleaned out, time to freshen the lube. Silicone grease works very well and won't dry out like the original. Insert a disk and you'll be able to see the moving parts and where the old grease is. You'll also see how to make the mechanism move without inserting a disk. In extreme cases, where the disk won't inject or stops part way in or out, you'll have to remove the inject/eject gearbox and take it apart to clean and lube its gears. Only do that if after cleaning and lubing the rest of the drive it still has trouble. Be careful around the read/write heads! Only very carefully clean using 91% rubbing alcohol or methylated spirits or surgical spirits on a cotton swap. (All the same thing, ethanol 'denatured' with a small amount of methanol to make it undrinkable plus 9% water.) My preference on the dust shield is to toss it. The 'seal' on the back around the cable is made with open cell foam so the exhaust fan on the power supply can still draw air through. That also sucks in any dust or fibers (like cigarette smoke and pet hair) through the disk slot and into the drive. The dust 'shield' is more of a dust trap. Without it the fan draws the crud *through* the drive. An alternate fix is to replace the open cell foam failure of a seal with a new one made from a layer or two of craft foam or other closed cell foam to give it a chance at actually blocking air flow around the cable and thus preventing the disk slot from acting like a mini Hoover vacuum. The later Macs with the manual inject drive also failed at keeping dirt out because Apple didn't have the manufacturer(s) design a flap that fully covered the slot in the case. It's the same flap as on PC floppy drives but Apple gave the cases that happy smiling slot that's larger than on PC drive's faceplates, leaving gaps around the edges. At least they didn't also wrap the manual inject drives in a plastic dust collector. -- ----- 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/
