Re: Misaligned Apple 3.5 drive

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Eric Le Bras writes ...
> 
> Hello,
> 
> My Apple 3.5 drive seems to be misaligned since it fell on the floor
> during a shipment. It can format a disk and r/w it, but it can hardly
> r/w any other disk. Can I realign it myself - then how ? -, or am I to
> replace the inner mechanism ?

     It would be great to get some info on aligning A2 3.5" drives. I've had
the drives apart a few times but do not know how to align one. If the process
is similar to that for a 5.25" drive, you would need to adjust the mounting
position of the stepper motor. (One way or the other, positioning of the heads
via the worm gear needs to match up with track locations on the diskette.)

     You could remove the case and metal cover and check to make sure nothing
is bent, broken, of knocked loose. If things look okay, experimenting with
alignment using a known-good diskette might be worthwhile.

     Something else to try adjusting is the zeroing detector. It's a
photo-detector which tells the drive where to start looking for Track 0. If it
has been bumped inward a smidgen (i.e. toward the front of the drive), the
drive could have problems finding Track 0 on most diskettes formatted on other
drives.



Rubywand