How to save a damaged 800k floppy drive

[RickNel]

Given that the Mac 800k drives are becoming harder to find, I've hacked up a fix for one of the common problems - bending the top head assembly spring hinge while trying to clean the heads. The solution is a DIY spring clip to restore proper head closure. It works.

I've posted a detailed description and pictures HERE

Rick

 

[wesleyfurr]

Will a high density drive (2Mb? 1.44Mb in the PC world) work in an older mac that has an 800k drive? Seems to me that in the PC world a high density drive will work in a PC that is only double-density capable, though of course only in DD mode. I have an external Apple 3.5 drive for a IIGS (though I think it is a unidisk or whatever rather than a true/standard Apple 3.5" drive (looks the same). At any rate...the mechanism was acting up...I was able to take a high density drive out of a Mac LCII (I think) and put it into the case and it works fine. Of course I guess this is all assuming that the physical mount, etc, is all the same...

Wesley

 

[RickNel]

Depends what you mean by "older " mac. The 1.4mb Superdrive is compatible with the Mac SE FDHD (1989) but all earlier models only accept 800k or 400k disks and will reject any HD disk. So the last few Compacts and Mac II*could use it, but not the 128k up to the Plus (AFAIK)

Rick

 

[wesleyfurr]

Maybe not a 400k mac...but what I'm thinking is...put a Superdrive in an 800k mac and use DSDD disks with it...will it work that way? Obviously it won't work with DSHD disks, but good chance it may work fine with DSDD disks. Might even work fine on a 400k mac...that's just a single sided DD disk?

Wesley

 

[RickNel]

You could try it, but I suspect that the ROM (BIOS+hardware drivers) in the earlier Mac models will not work with the Superdrive. I have not heard or read anywhere that it could work. Mac generally did not make things backwards compatible. If you try it, and it works, please let the world know via this forum!

Rick

 

[jrehmer]

Maybe not a 400k mac...but what I'm thinking is...put a Superdrive in an 800k mac and use DSDD disks with it...will it work that way? Obviously it won't work with DSHD disks, but good chance it may work fine with DSDD disks. Might even work fine on a 400k mac...that's just a single sided DD disk?

Wesley

Yes this will work... Many people have replaced their 800k external drive assemblies with 1.44MB assemblies. As long as its the auto-eject kind it should work without issue, except, like you stated, you cannot use 1.44MB disks (well, okay, you can but it will only read/write 800k).

 

[RickNel]

Yes this will work... Many people have replaced their 800k external drive assemblies with 1.44MB assemblies.

Maybe, but the external drive assemblies actually work differently to the internal drive connections. The external case has a logic board that adapts and reassigns a few pins. Apple information shows a standard pinout for superdrives, but when you look further there are differences among classic Macs in the use of pins 9,19 and 20 of the FDD connector. I'm still working on this for internal connection to a 512k and haven't cracked it so far.

Rick