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PS/2 Floppy Repair

R

RadRacer203

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 25, 2016
Messages
1,467
Location
Burlington VT
Just curious if anyone repairs these. The one in my mosel 35 stopped reading disks and I have some similar issues with the ones in a PC Convertible
 
One is a 1.44mb drive with the ide-looking connector and 2 are 720k drives with the edge connectors. I don't know the manufacturers off the top of my head
 
Maybe try local-ish computer clubs and/or ham radio clubs.
Does the Maker Space organisation operate in the U.S.?
 
I use a piece of tape, cut in a small strip, to tack the chip down while soldering the ends. After soldered, I remove the strip. Use separate rosin flux so you don't have to depend on the solders flux. Also, use small diameter solder. If you don't have any small diameter, use your cutters to cut a small strip, length wise.
I'm 72 and can't see anything closer than a foot and a half without glasses, so I suspect anyone could do it.
Dwight
 
Dwight Elvey said:
I use a piece of tape, cut in a small strip, to tack the chip down while soldering the ends. After soldered, I remove the strip. Use separate rosin flux so you don't have to depend on the solders flux. Also, use small diameter solder. If you don't have any small diameter, use your cutters to cut a small strip, length wise.
I'm 72 and can't see anything closer than a foot and a half without glasses, so I suspect anyone could do it.
Dwight
Click to expand...

I would try it myself but my hands are so shaky I can't do anything much smaller than a barrel battery
 
I repair them. Mostly it's bad caps. Sometimes the leakage damage is too extensive, I'm not sure what happens but the symptom is that the drive won't spin up. If your drive still spins up, it can probably be saved.
 
glitch said:
I repair them. Mostly it's bad caps. Sometimes the leakage damage is too extensive, I'm not sure what happens but the symptom is that the drive won't spin up. If your drive still spins up, it can probably be saved.
Click to expand...

I think I've got like 5 drives now, the 3 I've tried spin up and seek but can't read anything. The one in my model 35 worked perfectly until a month ago so I know that one can definitely be saved
 
glitch said:
I repair them. Mostly it's bad caps. Sometimes the leakage damage is too extensive, I'm not sure what happens but the symptom is that the drive won't spin up. If your drive still spins up, it can probably be saved.
Click to expand...

When you say this, do you mean drives that load down the power supply or drives that only don't work. Most capacitor failures that I've seen are on the power rails. I've seen a few else where but not so many that I can count them.
Dwight
 
Dwight Elvey said:
When you say this, do you mean drives that load down the power supply or drives that only don't work. Most capacitor failures that I've seen are on the power rails. I've seen a few else where but not so many that I can count them.
Dwight
Click to expand...

The caps are in both the power supply and signal sections. There's three nonpolar electrolytics in the motor control section. They don't drag the supply down when they fail, I suspect they just lose capacitance or the ESR gets really bad. On two of the drives that wouldn't spin up, I've pulled the motor control chip and found corrosion/goop under it, cleaning it up didn't fix the issue.
 
glitch said:
The caps are in both the power supply and signal sections. There's three nonpolar electrolytics in the motor control section. They don't drag the supply down when they fail, I suspect they just lose capacitance or the ESR gets really bad. On two of the drives that wouldn't spin up, I've pulled the motor control chip and found corrosion/goop under it, cleaning it up didn't fix the issue.
Click to expand...

So, it is still the juicy ones or the tantalums. Not just all of the capacitors. I generally don't look at the others. The newer surface mount ceramics seem to fail a lot, almost as much as tantalums. I agree, old electrolytics are a common source of problems. Some like to replace tantalums with electrolytics. I'm not a fan of doing that. Often the circuit will work fine without the tantalums in place as it is just extra insurance that the noise is not an issue. I do hate it when electrolytics leak. It is just a mess.
Dwight
 
glitch said:
I repair them. Mostly it's bad caps. Sometimes the leakage damage is too extensive, I'm not sure what happens but the symptom is that the drive won't spin up. If your drive still spins up, it can probably be saved.
Click to expand...

How much would you charge to recap a drive? The one that's kind of critical is the one in my model 35, the other 4 I have are just spares at the moment
 
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