Re: Apple //e keeps Killing Floppy Drives!

[Polymorph <polymorph69@hotmail.com>]

On Jun 5, 11:25 am, Boot Zero <ap...@bidlink.net> 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
>
> -BZ

Another possibility is that if the disks you are trying to boot from
are dusty/dirty, it may be that you are simply dirtying the heads in
all the drives that you place the disks in. You may need to clean the
disks (and now the heads of your drives) before you can get them
working again. At this point I'll hand over to MJM, because he is the
master at cleaning/reviving 5.25" disks. I have a scanned document on
my website that details the procedure for cleaning the heads on a
Disk ][ drive:

http://apple2.sytes.net/Floppy_Maintenance/index.html

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Mike