Thomas, I have also encountered this problem and it is not impossible to fix but it can be very time-consuming.
The RW spring mounts on which the Read Write heads are fitted - it's like a tiny gimbal - can be distorted easily. The spring mounts that press the head brackets on to the disk when its inserted can also be easily bent and from what you are describing, this is probably your issue. It is possible to remove the head brackets to bend the spring mounts but be prepared for read and write errors. The secret is to use careful bending, a little at a time to coax the flat metal spring (not a spring coil) to resume its original flatness. Re-assembling is tricky although the parts are indexed so they can only fit one way and there is very little movement. With blank floppies only, try to format them before you try reading a known good floppy disk like a system disk. Once you can format and copy to and from these test floppies, use Disk First Aid to check the disks. If you get errors with the formatting or reading these disks, you may need to make further, slight adjustments and then test the whole thing again - the time consuming part. There are two adjustments that will help but you should not be considering them at this stage. The first is the IR sensor that Charles mentioned. This is a coarse adjustment. Looking towards the front of the drive, to the left (your left) you will notice a square C shaped bracket. In between the arms of this bracket, or in a position a little way in front of this bracket is a lug that passes through the middle section of the C. The sensor acts like those laser grids in TV movies - break the beam and the alarm goes off. Break the beam with the lug and the drive knows where the start area of the floppy disk is. The second adjustment is a fine adjustment and involves the stepper motor. It's possible on some floppy drives to slightly loosen the bracket holding the stepper motor and then give it a twist to advance or retreat it in tiny increments. As I have said, these adjustments should not be considered at this stage although again, videos and instructions with pictures are available to view so that you can undo any incorrect adjustments. If everything is fine, try a known good floppy. It should read okay. If it doesn't read okay, try the floppies you used for testing again. As long as they still perform properly, you may have to adjust the drive to re-align the heads. There are videos and web pages on adjusting floppy drives. Of course, if you re-align the heads, the test floppies will need to be formatted again and tested again. Once that checks out, you can try a known good floppy like a system disk. The websites go into more detail than what I have here but they offer a straightforward set of instructions to help fix your floppy. Good luck! Keith On Saturday, 14 June 2014, 20:21, Charles <hardwarem...@gmail.com> wrote: lol no. There is a sensor that tells the drive were the head is. Charles On Jun 14, 2014, at 10:29 AM, Thomas Mendiola <tawesomed...@gmail.com> wrote: Wouldn't that cause the heads to be out of alignment afterward? Would I need to align it? > >On Friday, June 13, 2014 8:21:51 PM UTC-4, Thomas Mendiola wrote: >I recently purchased a Mac Classic II, and the floppy drive wasn't working. >Cleaned the heads, etc, but it still didn't work. I removed the floppy drive, >and it appears the read/write head doesn't have enough pressure to touch the >disk. Could anyone help me with this, or point me towards a replacement drive >that won't break the bank? > > -- >-- >----- >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 vintage-macs@googlegroups.com >To leave this group, send email to vintage-macs+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com >For more options, visit this group at >http://groups.google.com/group/vintage-macs > >Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/ >--- >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >"Vintage Macs" group. >To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >email to vintage-macs+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- ----- You received this message because you are a member of the Vintage Macs group. 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