Re: Apple //e keeps Killing Floppy Drives!

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Boot Zero wrote:
> Hey,
>
> I have an Apple //e enhanced, which has recently been brought back into 
> service.  Upon initial use, both floppy drives worked, and I was able to 
> copy some disks via ADT.  After a few hours of intermittent copying, 
> drive 1 (of a Duo-disk) was throwing errors.  Disks that used to boot 
> stopped booting.
>
> Drive 2 in the duo still worked.
>
> I purchased a stand-alone 5 1/4 floppy, that worked fine for a while, 
> then had the same problem. First it reads, then it throws errors, then 
> it won't boot.
>
> Bought another Duo-disk on E-bay.  Drive 2 was working, so I removed it 
> and installed it into my old Duo-disk unit, giving me 2 working drives. 
>  After some hours of intermittent use, drive 1 started throwing errors. 
>  Moving to drive 2, it worked fine for a while, then the same result.
>
> Before all drives died, I did a speed test using Copy2plus.  On the 
> drives that were working, they showed normal speeds (198-202ms).   On 
> the failing drives, the speeds are all over the place.  STarting at 
> around 225, then dropping to almost zero, then back up to 300 or so.
>
> Any idea what might be causing this?  Any clues as to what was needs to 
> be replaced?
>
> Any suggestions welcome

A marginal power supply can cause many symptoms.

If you have a voltmeter, measure the four output voltages (under load)
and verify that they are within +/-10%.

-michael

AppleCrate: An Apple II "blade server"!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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