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TEAC FD-55GFR 193-U Not Working, Help Needed

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First post, by appiah4

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Recently I got sent three 5.25" drives. The donor reported them as being faulty/non-working. I am trying my hand at repairing them, and this unit is the most promising of the bunch, so I want to start with it. I have never handled a 5.25" drive before so I need a lot of handholding here. Here are the issues with the drive:

- Visually and mechanically, it looks OK
- It powers on and the head moves to 0 position fine
- When connected to a PC, it does the self-test seek sound
- It gives a "Floppy disk(s) fail (40)" error when set as 1.2MB in BIOS
- The PC boots fine when set as a 360KB drive in BIOS
- Regardless of setting used, inserting a disk and switching to the drive results in some weird head movement (as if the head is trying to move beyond the 0 position) with an eventual read error.

Please find attached phtoos of the drive.

Also, a video of what the drive does is uploaded to YT here: https://youtu.be/ePJWhBfY5so

I am hoping this is a configuration/jumper issue, and I'm open to all suggestions and advice. I really hope to get one working 5.25 drive out of this lot at least 😀

Reply 1 of 2, by Zerthimon

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Hi! Can you try moving the head all the way back, by hand (towards the flat cable connector) and do a photo of this area?
Seems like the heads are stuck before the track 0 position.

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Reply 2 of 2, by Deunan

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Usually I'd say dirty track 0 sensor, but as you can see on that model it's on the bottom, upside-down, it's rare for it it get so much dirt/dust in there to stop working. But not impossible.

1) Make sure the head sled moves all the way forward and back - by hand, unpowered. The stepper motor does offer some resistance but not much, it should move smoothly. If it binds in any spot I would first suspect dirty rails and bushings, then perhaps the motor itself.
2) Blow some compressed air into the sensor, there's 2 slits inside that form the actual optical barrier and the plastic part on the bottom of the sled must be able to reach them

Oh and DO NOT remove that bottom PCB, the sensor it attached to it. Of all the things that mess up alignment this is the easiest to fix afterwards but don't do it unless you have to, or want to learn the process the hard way.

You can use IMD and manual stepping of the heads forwards/backwards in the alignment mode to test the sensor (and the head positioning in general) but note that some drives latch the sensor output at head step pulse, keep that in mind if you try to test the sensor with a piece of paper.

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