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5 1/4" Distar thinline external floppy

Third party Apple II drives were all over the place quality-wise. Some were decent, solid drives that could outlast a genuine Apple II drive. Others were cheap, hardly functional garbage. It depended on the guts of the drive. There were lots of small name vendors that grabbed random 5.25" Shugart style drives, put on their own modified electronics, and slapped their own label on them.
 
SomeGuy said:
Third party Apple II drives were all over the place quality-wise. Some were decent, solid drives that could outlast a genuine Apple II drive. Others were cheap, hardly functional garbage. It depended on the guts of the drive. There were lots of small name vendors that grabbed random 5.25" Shugart style drives, put on their own modified electronics, and slapped their own label on them.
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Yes some were reasonable, some were bad and a rare few where good.

Slamming the heads into the backstop to find track zero because apple were too cheap to use a track zero sensor ensured I had a steady supply of customers needing their drive realigned back in the day.
 
My favorite 3rd-party floppy drive is the Franklin Ace drives. Besides allowing for calibrating without opening the case, this drive is rugged. It is also much heavier than most other drives. I've picked these up off eBay over the years, and have yet to come across one that was non-functional.
 
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