Kaypro 2X Drive Failure

[ebp]

When I received my Kaypro 2X, I made a boot disk on a MS-DOS PC with IMD and booted the Kaypro. It booted maybe twice before Drive A quit working. The motor would spin until the door was closed and then it would stall. I swapped drive B for A and got the machine booting again. I found a replacement drive on eBay and the seller bought it for me! Yay! But what to do with the failed drive?

The drive is a Toshiba FDD 5406.

Front:

Model info:

Top view:

Bottom view:


I was inspecting the motor drive board (the one under the platter with the timing marks - see Bottom view) when I noticed that most of the electrolytic capacitors had corrosion on their leads.
.

I pulled the board, removed the capacitors, and replaced them with new ones and now the motor doesn't stall! Even better, it actually booted the Kaypro! Now I have a spare in case one of the others fails. This might be old news, but if you have a drive with a motor that doesn't spin under load, there might be an easy fix.

Erik

 

[johndias]

Hi Erik, I've got the very same Toshiba drive and the very same issue (corroded leads on the motor drive caps). I can't figure out how to remove the motor drive board, can you give me some tips? Much appreciated!

 

[ebp]

Six months late. Life intruded into hobby time. To remove the motor drive board, I had to remove the motor cover. The screws were very tight. One was destroyed and had to be drilled-out. You can see it is missing in the picture. I don't recall any other difficulties. I'm sure the missing screw creates a tiny imbalance but it didn't seem to affect the drive performance.