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800k Floppy drive keeps ejecting when it gets power

RoadWarrior

Member
Joined
Jun 28, 2012
Messages
35
Made a thread a while ago that my Mac Plus's internal floppy drive didn't work, I tried fixing it but still didn't work so I swapped drives from a Mac SE. Now when I power it on it makes the eject motions and keeps going through the motions as if trying to eject something. I have rechecked the ribbon cable, it is attached firmly and isn't twisted around or anything. It is the ribbon cable that was from the SE, not sure if that makes any difference. Side by side the drives are mostly identical with minor differences. This one is a Sony MFD-51W-03 I believe the other just says MFD-51W.

Edit: both cables are red color coded, I have tried both with no difference.
 
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Made a thread a while ago that my Mac Plus's internal floppy drive didn't work, I tried fixing it but still didn't work so I swapped drives from a Mac SE. Now when I power it on it makes the eject motions and keeps going through the motions as if trying to eject something. I have rechecked the ribbon cable, it is attached firmly and isn't twisted around or anything. It is the ribbon cable that was from the SE, not sure if that makes any difference. Side by side the drives are mostly identical with minor differences. This one is a Sony MFD-51W-03 I believe the other just says MFD-51W.

Edit: both cables are red color coded, I have tried both with no difference.

There were some drives that needed a YELLOW striped cable (it cuts one of the lines), I don't recall off hand the model drive that needed it or which pin/wire was left floating off hand. Might be the issue.

Or the drive might think it has a disk stuck (some sensor is in wrong position/broken), thus it keeps trying to eject.

I will try to look up the yellow cable and drive difference info and post it when I can find it again.
 
Road Warrior, your red color coded cable is for a 1.44 Mb drive as in MFD-75W-01. The 800 k drive needs a different cable but I don't remember the color code.

AichEss
 
Road Warrior, your red color coded cable is for a 1.44 Mb drive as in MFD-75W-01. The 800 k drive needs a different cable but I don't remember the color code.

AichEss

That's weird because both machines have red color cables. If red is for 1.44 mb drive that wouldn't make sense for it to be in a Mac Plus, my Mac SE says it has a 800k drive on the case too.
 
Try this to help sort it out

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA32289?viewlocale=en_US

I think Apple is talking about the drive mechanism in the external 3.5" Apple drives. Maybe it applies, maybe not.

AichEss

I have an external drive and it is a MFD-51W-03 too it seems, but even the cable in it has a red color coded cable. If I could figure out how to get it out I would swap to see if I get the same problem. I must have messed up the eject mechanism somehow when I took it out so I guess will have to see what to do about that.
 
The issue can be to do with the way Apple changed the function of pin 9. I made up a flat cable with 20pin headers, carefully separated out lines 9 and 20, and put DIP switches across them. Isolating pin 9 solves most issues. Some combinations of controller and drive also require isolation of pin 20.

It is also possible that you have dirt in the drive preventing proper seating, alignment or sensing of disk type. A thorough clean is advisable (plenty of on-line guides to that). Take care not to bend up the metallic spring hinge-piece that holds the top head - this is very hard to fix.

Rick
 
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