Re: Adding a second floppy drive to an Apple IIe

[Jeff Shanholtz <jeffsubs@shanholtz.com>]

Well, I'm having second thoughts and may want to revive one of these
after all. 2 of the drives are off brand and 1 is apple so I'm hoping
to get the apple one working. It does spin up at boot time and I hear
the familiar booting sound coming from the drive, but at that point it
just spins without any hint of real activity (with a bootable disk in,
of course). Are there any troubleshooting guides available somewhere
to help me fix this? I do have hardware repair experience but I
wouldn't know where to start looking, and I'm guessing someone has
compiled a document somewhere about restoring these things.

These symptoms don't strike me as being explained by one of the
mechanical problems described by you, Michael, but if you disagree I
would be happy to crack her open and have a look.

I appreciate the advice!

On Apr 29, 4:55 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
> Jeff Shanholtz wrote:
> > Thanks guys. These drives were borrowed from a friend and I was
> > possibly going to buy one, so I will likely just give them back as
> > they are. I'm sure I plugged them in correctly though.
>
> Old drives often have "mechanical" problems:
>
> 1. Off-speed--run speed adjusting program and adjust speed pot.
> 2. Dirty head--open and clean head carefully with alcohol.
> 3. Congealed seek cam grease--open, clean old grease, and
>     sparsely regrease with lithium grease.  Also check head guides.
> 4. Hardened drive belt--open drive and inspect belt.  Replace if
>     hardened, "exercise" it if it just has a "set".  Speed may need
>     adjusting.  (Occasional use prevents/cures some belt problems.)
>
> -michael
>
> NadaNet 3.1 for Apple II parallel computing!
> Home page:  http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/
>
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> tool--and it's seriously underused."