Hi,
I got a //c in the mail today, traded it for some Amiga equipment with a chap across the pond.
I had about 60 or 70 floppies from 1987 I wanted to try again, and a few of them actually booted and I ran a couple of programs. But, after a while the drive gave more and more errors, and eventually it wouldn't boot anything at all. Not even the ones that worked earlier.
So I'm guessing this could be a drive alignment problem. I just read that there could be some issues with 60Hz equipment in 50Hz land, but I'm unaware which changes I must do in order to make things work.
Anyone here know what I should do? What are my options? Right now I'm unable to boot anything at all, it seems.
Did you try cleaning the Drive's head? If you lift up on the Drive's head itself , you will see a white circle with a line going accross it , if you gently use Isopropal Alchohal on it , it generally cleans it up prety good , just use enough to clean the surface of the head itself. I have done this many times in the past and it has let me run old floppy disks again...
Patrick.
A24ever.
Hey skurk,
Yeah, there are a couple issues here, but they are all sort of maintenance related. First and easiest to fix is the drive spinning RPM. There are several software packages that let you check the drive speed to make sure that it's within the recommended parameters. Even if the hertz rate has caused this, I think that you'll be able to adjust things without having to crack open the casing. I recommend one of the later versions of Copy][+, as I think they all had the "Check Disk Speed" option in the menu. There is a small hole under the disk drive where you insert a very small phillips head screw driver to control a potentiometer that is the fine adjust controller for the disk drive. You make your adjustments while the RPM calibration software is running and the software lets you know when things are optimum.
The other big maintenance project with these drives are the magnetic read/write heads. I recommend that you clean this no matter what, as if it's dirty it can wreck your good floppy disks. You can use a disk cleaning disk and fluid. Alternately you can use the SAM's guide recommended method. Open up the case and expose the disk drive mechanism. While you're in there you might as well first blow out all the dust, hair, bugs, and whatnot that has accumulated over the years with some compressed air. Wrap a Q-tip (ear swab) with a ladies nylon stocking and dip it in anhydrous (without water) alcohol. Make a scrubbing action on the magnetic head and you'll probably see the dirt transferring to the once white Q-tip. Repeat this procedure until the head is clean and the Q-tips can't pick up any more dirt.
Good luck, and let us know how things turn out.
Mutant Pie
I'd try the Copy][+ if I were able to boot something, but since I'm not, I'll have to try the drive head cleaning tip first.
I'll give it a try tomorrow and will get back to you guys with the results. Thanks!
Yeah, working then not working in the same year pretty much points to a dirty head. If it happens in the same day, then it's head dirt for sure.