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Ok, what did I do? IIc internal floppy

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dhoelzer

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Oct 20, 2012
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New York
Greetings!

A new(old) IIc arrived with the FedEx man today. This is by no means my first time around the block with one of these.

I spent some time testing it out first and found that, while it was pretty dirty, it seemed to be functional. This included booting off of a floppy.

I spent about two or three hours giving it a thorough cleaning, discovering along the way that an earlier IIc keyboard will not work properly in this IIc... The key mapping seems to be completely different. Weird. Anyway, since the really clean keyboard that I had would not work correctly, I thoroughly cleaned the original dirty one.

To bring this long story to a conclusion, I reassembled everything, installing a much cleaner known good floppy from another IIc that had bit the dust. Power on, everything lights up, disk spins... "Check disk drive." Weird. Lots of poking and prodding to no avail, I replace the original (working 2 hours ago) drive and restart. "Check disk drive."

Any ideas??? There are no obvious signs that anything is amiss. The floppy that is refusing the boot is the same one used to test the thing out just a short time ago.

Thanks!
 
If the drive speed is out of spec it won't read disks written by other systems either. If this is the case it should still be able to format/read its own disks, you can ADTPro a copy of "Copy ][ Plus" utilities over and run its disk speed test.
 
Try cleaning the drive's read/write head. Old disks that are going bad can shed oxide or other gunk that gets stuck to the head(s) of any drive you put the disk into, and renders the drive unable to read even known-good disks until you clean the head(s) (singular in this case since the IIc only has a single-sided floppy drive).
 
Great questions.

1) Yes, I've tried booting other disks. Remember, though, that I'm trying to boot exactly the same disk that was working on the system in the same drive that was working. Trying a second known good drive was a last resort.
2) True. If I have to I'll take apart a Disk 2 and put this into it and time it on a IIe, but these are two known good drives that worked hours before.
3) I can do that, but it seems weird that the drives would suddenly be so dirty that they can't read the disk even though they were working.

I'll try these things out but I'm open to any other suggestions! Thanks!
 
After hours of poking, prodding, scoping and analyzing, I realized that the floppy itself was not turning in its sleeve. Applying a bit of pressure to the arm of either drive allows it to read the floppy just fine. To be more specific, I apply pressure to the flat sort of spring return piece that rests on the top of the bezel and connects via a screw to the floppy ejector and has a c-clip holding the plastic top guide for the floppy where it hits the spindle.

This leads to the next question... I see absolutely no way to adjust this. I'm attaching a photo in case it helps. I'm interested in suggestions since this seems to be the solution for both drives. By the way, I have verified that the floppy itself spins freely in its sleeve.

IMG_0958.jpg
 
dhoelzer said:
After hours of poking, prodding, scoping and analyzing, I realized that the floppy itself was not turning in its sleeve. Applying a bit of pressure to the arm of either drive allows it to read the floppy just fine. To be more specific, I apply pressure to the flat sort of spring return piece that rests on the top of the bezel and connects via a screw to the floppy ejector and has a c-clip holding the plastic top guide for the floppy where it hits the spindle.

This leads to the next question... I see absolutely no way to adjust this. I'm attaching a photo in case it helps. I'm interested in suggestions since this seems to be the solution for both drives. By the way, I have verified that the floppy itself spins freely in its sleeve.

View attachment 17713
Click to expand...

Are you using proper DSDD or SSDD media, I know most DSHD media did away with the hub reinforcement, could explain why the drive cant grip the disk properly.
 
I have some 5-1/4" disks that have failed in this way. The "felt" inside the disks has apparently deteriorated and lost it's lubricity, and actually brakes the disk. I have about 150 such disks.

I had one such disk that had important data on it (naturally, no backup), so I did this:

1.jpg2.jpg3.jpg4.jpg

The disk jacket itself has better lubricity than the "felt" does. Actually, this disk still works very well like that, not that I would rely on it anymore, but it does make for an interesting demonstration.
 
Last edited:
RWallmow said:
Are you using proper DSDD or SSDD media, I know most DSHD media did away with the hub reinforcement, could explain why the drive cant grip the disk properly.
Click to expand...

Indeed I am. This is a DSDD disk with a hub reinforcement on it.

Now that I'm reading what I've written, though, it does seem suspicious that both drives can't read that disk. Unfortunately I don't have another Apple II formatted floppy to work with just now. I have a stick of about 80 diskettes, but their all formatted for Commodores at the moment.

I'll hook up my serial line and send something over ADTPro to it and try putting it on another floppy. It could simply be that the hub on *this* floppy doesn't want to grab for some weird reason.
 
k2x4b524[ said:
Is t possible that the pieces that clamp to the disk themselves are out of alignment? Meaning, since they don't grab the disk right, are they just simply worn out after years of use?
Click to expand...

I don't think so... It's possible, but it's both drives and the two drives were both fully functional and come from different systems. I think I was so focused on it being a hardware problem that I didn't consider that it could be the floppy since I could turn it by hand.
 
The ones I have that won't spin (or sometimes just don't spin at the right speed) do turn freely by hand.
 
What you've done in cleaning it is removed gunk that was pressing things together tight enough to work; it's the same thing that happens if you don't flush your transmission fluid for several years, have it done and suddenly the clutch doesn't work. Material was ground away and replaced by goo... remove the goo it stops working.

Unless you can bend things into tighter tolerance (often not viable) you may have ruined it by cleaning it. It happens. The second floppy in my Sharp PC-7000 is similarly afflicted. Was working right up until I cleaned it. The arm that closes the door wasn't closing far enough as the plastic was worn away. I fixed it by putting a write-protect sticker in to fill the gap.
 
Very interesting though. I think this may be what's going on.

The arm itself (as you know) is a cast piece of what looks like aluminum or a cheap alloy. It may be possible to shim the top hub so that it mashes the disk down into the spindle a little bit more tightly.

Thanks for the idea!

deathshadow said:
What you've done in cleaning it is removed gunk that was pressing things together tight enough to work; it's the same thing that happens if you don't flush your transmission fluid for several years, have it done and suddenly the clutch doesn't work. Material was ground away and replaced by goo... remove the goo it stops working.

Unless you can bend things into tighter tolerance (often not viable) you may have ruined it by cleaning it. It happens. The second floppy in my Sharp PC-7000 is similarly afflicted. Was working right up until I cleaned it. The arm that closes the door wasn't closing far enough as the plastic was worn away. I fixed it by putting a write-protect sticker in to fill the gap.
Click to expand...
 
I took the arm apart and took out the plastic top piece that mates with the lower hub.

The upper piece is held with a C clip retainer holding a post that passes through a bearing. The plastic top piece is actually two separate pieces and two springs.

I gave the springs a bit of a stretch, reassembled and voila! Everything works just fine.


I've now discovered a new issue. If I boot off of an ADT Pro floppy, it boots just fine.. but when I select "Serial" or any other module, the system halts (power off) and then resets a few seconds later. Based on the behavior it seems pretty clear that something is causing the switching power converter board to become unhappy, powering everything down. This unhappy moment seems to be connected with the floppy drive starting up again. I've tried this with two different drives and they behave the same way...

Ideas?
 
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