Re: How to adjust the speed of floppy drives?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Simon Williams wrote:

>Did you know that dropping a duodisk down a flight of stairs onto
>concrete can cause the speed adjustment to vary? (This happened to my
>first IIe before I even got a chance to plug it in -- good thing it was
>only $5)... interestingly, only the drive that took the main impact was
>affected and, after fixing the speed, has been running without incident
>for about 18 months. I'm thinking about running my imagewriter through a
>similar test ;-)

Cool!  ;-)

On a more sober note, although much more serious things could
happen to a drive dropped as you describe, the speed adjustment
trimpot is constructed in such a way that a large acceleration along
its long axis can cause the wiper to "jump" grooves on the adjusting
screw, causing a simple speed adjustment problem.

I hope that's all that happened to your drive (aside from bending some
sheet metal, I'll bet  ;-).

-michael

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