On Fri, 4 Dec 2009 18:18:19 -0600, David Colvin <[email protected]> wrote: > > The point is that there was a lot of back and forth disk swapping between > the three computers. I'm fairly certain that I never put a 1.4mg disk into > the 512ke or the Plus and Classic should have no trouble reading anything. > > Suddenly, all three drives stopped reading all disks. Weird! What the heck > did I do this time? >
I too have had this happen when I got a load of disks from someone and was making disk images of them. As it turns out, the disks were dirty. Age and the storage conditions had taken their toll. I had the same symptoms: every floppy drive would stop reading disks, even my own known-good disks. The solution was simple: open the disk drive and clean the heads with a Q-tip in alcohol (or water). If you look closely, you will see a dark smudge on the drive heads (or on your Q-tip after wiping) that's from the dirty disks. Just clean it out and the drives will work well again. WARNING!!!!! ABSOLUTELY DO NOT LIFT UP THE UPPER DRIVE HEAD ARM!!!!! If your disk drive is an 800k or 1.4MB super drive, DO NOT lift up the black arm which has the upper head! I did this on two different SuperDrives and PERMANENTLY destroyed that head arm. There is a delicate copper metal which keeps tension. Lifting up the head arm WILL bend this bit of copper. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!! -- ----- You received this message because you are a member of the Vintage Macs group. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vintage-macs Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/
