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Fixing floppy drives ?

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First post, by SETBLASTER

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i got an old system that was kept untouched for many years.

tried to read a brand new floppy disk and it worked

then copied files to the floppy disk and it worked also

then tried to run a program install from the floppy disk and it failed at some percentage of the installation

after that. the floppy drive refused to read the floppy and any other floppies i got

what kind of repair can be done to save floppy drives besides using the floppy disk cleaner with alcohol?

a recap of all electrolitic capacitors on the pcb is enough?

its not the first time that some drives died or refused to read or write.

Reply 1 of 2, by Caluser2000

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First thing I'd do is clean the heads.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 2 of 2, by Horun

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-05-21, 00:40:

First thing I'd do is clean the heads.

Yes ! While cleaning heads: use a little ISO alc on a Q-Tip/cotton swap and touch up the rails, stepper screw and all places that are lubricated where you see old grease,
then apply a slight amount of new light weight white grease with a tooth pick to those areas.
Set the BIOS to do floppy seeks and do a bunch reboots so the heads get moved, do that a dozen times and try to read disk agian.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

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