Re: How to adjust the speed of floppy drives?

[Wayne Stewart <waynes@telus.dotnet>]

Ernest wrote:
> I have a couple of "hacked" disk ][ style drives that are no longer working.
> I'm not exactly sure of what the problem is but I think that the speed
> adjustments are off. The former owner moved the adjustment pots to the
> front of the drive because (according to him) the drives needed to be
> adjusted frequently and he was tired of having to take the drives out to
> adjust them. The drives also have Write Protect toggle switches and the
> red/green lights on the front too (also added by the former owner.) I don't
> want to toss the drives out if I can repair them but I'm not sure how best
> to do it.
>
> I don't have a strobe light for adjusting them, and they are not able to
> read any of the speed utility disks for adjusting the drives by hand. Is
> there a way to adjust the drives by small amounts to see if I can finally
> get them to read a disk? Can I adjust the drives on the fly, while a disk
> is spinning in the drive, or do I have to power down between adjustments? 

I was wondering if it was possible to get a drive so far out that you
couldn't get a drive speed reading. So I tried it with a Disk II and a
platinum 5.25" and at both ends of the speed setting I was able to read
the speed. I used Copy II Plus to check the speed.
The utilities check speed by writing a marker to th disk so it's best to
use a blank disk. Cleaning the head isn't a bad idea too. I also found
that if I adjusted the speed more than 60MS from my test starting speed
I'd be unable to read that marker but no problem, I'd just resart the
test and the utility would write a new marker.

If the drives won't read a floppy then put a good drive in the drive 1
position and the problem one in the drive 2 position.

Wayne