Disk drive problem

I am having problems with my Apple IIe disk drive not reading properly and diagnosed it as a speed/synchronization problem.

Dirty heads are far more likely to be the problem, but if you've measured rotational speed with one of the utilities out there... then there ya go.

I am told that you can adjust the disk drive speed to compensate for this. How is this done?

There's a little rotational potentiometer on the circuit board inside the DiskII case. Take the case off and have a look. If you can boot to a copy utility that measures disk speed in real-time, you can rotate the pot to get it to 300 RPM.

You might have a look at this:
http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/Csa2FDRIVE.html#002
and this:
http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/Csa2FDRIVE.html#003

Everything else is OK and I don't want to damage any data on my disks.

Definitely, stop using disks you care about until this one gets back in shape.

You will need a small micro like screw driver and a blank disk.

THE BLANK DISK IS USED TO WRITE DATA BACK AND FORTH. Copy II+ in the later versions had a speed test, but you had to use a blank disk.

Take Care

Yoop! The guys nailed it for you! The utility
that I use is called Copy II and it has that
speed-tracking program on it. The 'pot' that
you want is a small rectangular one with an
sdjustment screw in the end (at least that's
what mine all looked like). Try to find a non-
inductive type of screw driver (the little
colored plastic ones that E-techs use) so as
to keep stray static and signals at a minimum.
Go slow and it may take more than one try.

Good move about not running any disks on that
drive. In early days I screwed up a couple of
irreplaceable disks that way. The drive will
corrupt the data and write other data at the
wrong speed. Once you get your drive back in
adjustment, the disk will be unreadable because
data was written at another (wrong) speed.

Also...always make backups!

Good luck on your repair. It's not too tough to
do. Just follow the program.