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I've tested that one. It almost worked, but it was still not the right one 🙁

You might have some luck with VCR refurbishment belt packs. You get an assortment of belts of random diameters and such, and I've been able to use a couple from the pack I paid like $3 for. Alas, they may dry rot before I put the rest to use.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3529607

You can 3dprint them from TPU,
but be careful, don`t stretch them too much.

i can also print one for you if needed, a letter is dirt cheap to send 😀

matze79 wrote on 2020-01-29, 18:42:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3529607 […]
Show full quote

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3529607

You can 3dprint them from TPU,
but be careful, don`t stretch them too much.

i can also print one for you if needed, a letter is dirt cheap to send 😀

Haha I got the dimensions from that I think, the belt in the picture is around 70mm diameter.

I've been trying to fix a couple of mine up as well since I don't even have one good Toshiba floppy drive to work with 2/3 toshibas at this point.

I ended up buying some random belts and thankfully 2 of them were able to fit:

The original belt had pretty much perished and just stretched til it snapped shortly after. The cheapo belts I bought (more than 1 arrived damaged) have a thicker diameter, the original belts are maybe 1mm wide and 0.5mm thick. These new belts are at least 1mm thick.

When I measure the new belt, it's around 95mm x2 so around 60mm diameter, which works out okay when the belt is stretched enough.

I just unscrewed the motor, placed the belt on it, screwed it back in, then wound the belt over the bearing/pulley.
To get it fully on there I pressed on the belt onto the floppy spindle near the pulley/bearing and just wound it round until it was fully on there.
Because the belt is so much thicker, twists are more of a problem so while holding the belt onto the spindle so it can't fall off, I pointed a small screwdriver into one of the holes to turn the spindle slowly a few times until all the twists had worked out.
It might be easier on yours, I damaged the spindle a bit while trying to dismantle the drive initially.
I also found that screwing the top plate on is necessary for it to read properly.

Once it was all back together - it's been able to read disks without any trouble, though I do wonder if this belt is a little bit too tight, the drive makes a trundling sound but works okay.
If someone has some TPE filament, maybe print some out and sell them since they're so hard to find through other means 😁

I tried to get an "EME279TC" drive working in the same way, but the belt being too tight stops the motor from spinning so that's no good.

hehe i spend a lot of time getting that fucking belt inside the drive.. then i cracked the head accidently..

Ouch - yeah I've done similar, this is not the first drive I've tried taking apart. This video here helped a fair bit, but not quite the same drive.

Also, check this Ebay belt, it doesn't show up in search right now because the seller is away: Citizen W1D Floppy Laufwerksriemen Flachriemen 1mm breit ***NEU***. It's more than I would pay though, fixing my drive cost around £3.70.

Last year I got a few from here
100% match with the orignal one in a Citizen W1D!

Had to change the rotting electrolitic capacitors too.

Your drive is not W1D and is flat pulley than grooved. W1D has 3 pulley with flanges means there is no room for 2.8mm wide belt. Had to be 1mm width.

Cheers,

Damn, you are right! I swapped two belts last June. One drive is from a 386 notebook. I'm pretty sure it was W1x something. Maybe A or B. Sorry.

Are you sure the LTE/Lite 25E has a W1D diskette drive? Every LTE/Lite that I've taken apart has a Citizen VIDA-15B diskette drive. I would love to find belts for those.

I wonder about another solution, did anyone ever managed to replace W1D with another drive (with direct motor)? I know that plugging in other drives makes the activity LED constantly lit and they just don't work, but is making other drives work just a matter of matching the pinout (by manually soldering the wires or making an adapter), or are the differences bigger than that?

I put some random square belt there several years ago, but now it seems to be loose again.

adalbert wrote on 2020-10-12, 10:01:

I wonder about another solution, did anyone ever managed to replace W1D with another drive (with direct motor)?

It is possible only if enough available place to fit, cause usually all other drivers are much bigger.

DAVE86 wrote on 2020-01-31, 10:31:

Damn, you are right! I swapped two belts last June. One drive is from a 386 notebook. I'm pretty sure it was W1x something. Maybe A or B. Sorry.

The drive on your picture looks identical to my Citizen U0DA-31A from a COMPAL BC380 series notebook (my copy has a "Peacock" label on it). My drive is currently non-operational due to mishandling it on the belt swap procedure. I hope I can get it back to operation some day by realigning heads and the stepper motor. Now I know which screws not to loosen and how to not rip the lower plastic head assembly out of its metal holder, but that drive is currently gone, even formatting a floppy (which should word if just the track layout is offset) fails.

The belt on that drive is indeed quite different from the W1D belt. I used a 69 x 3mm belt for my drive, which is quite close to the 71 x 2.8mm belt you used, and the spindle drive seems to work fine now.

MAZter wrote on 2020-10-12, 12:54:

adalbert wrote on 2020-10-12, 10:01:

I wonder about another solution, did anyone ever managed to replace W1D with another drive (with direct motor)?

It is possible only if enough available place to fit, cause usually all other drivers are much bigger.

Some drives use the same pinout but the problem is exactly this, some drives are differently shaped. They may not even be larger, just have a different shape and thus won't fit ...

What we'd need is a drop-in replacement but I doubt these exist ..

W1D is unique is thickness. Thinnest ever, the later ones were thicker due to direct drive spindle motor.