I have a floppy drive that occasionally has issues reading disks. I have determined if I manually advance the drive heads forward, it reads fine. Looks like there is a sensor that detects when the heads are all the way back. If that sensor is interrupted, it seems like the drive will not detect a disk.
Wanted to see if this might be an easy fix before I scrap and replace it.
SuperSirLink wrote on 2020-05-26, 16:51:I have a floppy drive that occasionally has issues reading disks. I have determined if I manually advance the drive heads forward, it reads fine. Looks like there is a sensor that detects when the heads are all the way back. If that sensor is interrupted, it seems like the drive will not detect a disk.
Wanted to see if this might be an easy fix before I scrap and replace it.
Manually advance the drive heads forward?
What type of floppy drive is it? If it's a 5.25" drive, it may not have the jumpers set correctly. If it's a 3.5" drive, it's probably not worth the trouble trying to fix it.
ohh sorry, completely forgot that part... it is a 3.5"
Tetrium wrote on 2020-05-27, 15:37:SuperSirLink wrote on 2020-05-26, 16:51:I have a floppy drive that occasionally has issues reading disks. I have determined if I manually advance the drive heads forward, it reads fine. Looks like there is a sensor that detects when the heads are all the way back. If that sensor is interrupted, it seems like the drive will not detect a disk.
Wanted to see if this might be an easy fix before I scrap and replace it.
Manually advance the drive heads forward?
I can rotate the worm drive motor so that the heads are towards the front of the drive. There is what appears to be a sensor that the carriage assembly the heads are mounted on interrupts that sensor when it is all the way back. As long as the carriage is outside that sensor, the drive works just fine.
SuperSirLink wrote on 2020-05-27, 20:37:ohh sorry, completely forgot that part... it is a 3.5"
What make and model?
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...😉
It is a Mitsumi drive, model D359M3 I believe...
SuperSirLink wrote on 2020-05-27, 20:39:Tetrium wrote on 2020-05-27, 15:37:SuperSirLink wrote on 2020-05-26, 16:51:I have a floppy drive that occasionally has issues reading disks. I have determined if I manually advance the drive heads forward, it reads fine. Looks like there is a sensor that detects when the heads are all the way back. If that sensor is interrupted, it seems like the drive will not detect a disk.
Wanted to see if this might be an easy fix before I scrap and replace it.
Manually advance the drive heads forward?
I can rotate the worm drive motor so that the heads are towards the front of the drive. There is what appears to be a sensor that the carriage assembly the heads are mounted on interrupts that sensor when it is all the way back. As long as the carriage is outside that sensor, the drive works just fine.
This is strange for me, because when I manually move the heads of my floppy drives, the first thing they do when the machine turns on is returning the head to the back position, so I can't understand how that can make any difference.
Agreed, I was surprised it worked. When it doesn't read, you can tell there is no movement.
I have 2 strange issues with 3.5 in floppy drives. One of them will no longer boot properly from boot floppies. Gets stuck at "starting MS-Dos", and make terrible noise like it can't get to the track that it needs. But this drive test completely good with every tool I've tried.
The other drive will boot fine, but gets stuck loading a second floppy if I'm doing a multi-disk install. This drive also tests complete good.
Both issues seem like a stepper head issue to me, but I can't find anything that talks about adjusting and testing this properly. Thoughts? Any help would be extremely useful.
Kempj18 wrote on 2021-12-03, 14:44:I have 2 strange issues with 3.5 in floppy drives. One of them will no longer boot properly from boot floppies. Gets stuck at "starting MS-Dos", and make terrible noise like it can't get to the track that it needs. But this drive test completely good with every tool I've tried.
The other drive will boot fine, but gets stuck loading a second floppy if I'm doing a multi-disk install. This drive also tests complete good.
Both issues seem like a stepper head issue to me, but I can't find anything that talks about adjusting and testing this properly. Thoughts? Any help would be extremely useful.
Found something more related. I learned its not the floppy drive. I've upgrade the CPU to a Cyrix cx486dlc with an external FPU module. Since that upgrade is when I can no longer boot from floppy. The floppy drive works fine in other computers. Anyone else seen related issues?
