Re: Rotting 5.25 floppies

[Polymorph <polymorph69@hotmail.com>]

On Aug 5, 10:57 am, bloomer_au <bloo...@iprimus.com.au> wrote:
> Thanks for the advice guys.
>
> To clarify one point:
>
> "> Last night, after I played some Savage Island Part I, I put in a
>
> > different 5.25, and it did the screwing my drive routine.
>
> I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this...  Do you mean that after
> running this disk, disks that previously worked stop working? "
>
> Yes, that is what I mean :) The Scott Adams disk ran fine multiple
> times, but then I put this 2nd disk in. The 2nd disk wouldn't boot and
> I got 'check startup device!', and then when I went back to the Scott
> Adams disk, it wouldn't boot either. That suggested to me the
> mechanism of the 2nd disk introducing some crud into the drive. I had
> experienced this same pattern of trouble before with several 5.25s,
> one standalone and a kind of duodisk thing (unsure of brand) attached
> to an Apple II clone. So the pattern has been - disks work, then after
> a particular disk is put in (not the exact same one mentioned in this
> example) nothing works. Then after a clean or three, maybe I get to
> the point where the first disk is okay to be run again. Or maybe
> nothing ever works again. And my disks have been stored very well as
> far as I can tell.

If you want to try manually cleaning your drives heads, I have a
scanned document I my website that details the procedure for a Disk ]
[. If you have the more recent 5.25" drive, the procedures are fairly
similar (I've successfully cleaned my IIgs's drives using the
procedure).

The document is scanned from Apple II Plus/IIe Troubleshooting &
Repair Guide (by Robert C. Brenner):
http://apple2.sytes.net/Floppy_Maintenance/index.html

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Mike