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Tandy 1000 floppy drive problems

Thatguyagain

Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2021
Messages
35
Location
Mn
Hi, i got a project tandy 1000 at a yard sale with some awsome goodys that im working on reserecting. Problem #1 is niether of the teac fd-54b-02-u drives are spinning up. The jumpers look good, the heads move and there is activity on the red light but the motors do not spin. Ive noticed that when the drives tried to activate the motor does apear to magnetize and spin but does not. The bearings feel great and ive cleaned and lubed everything.
Ideas?
 
The low-hanging fruit to check first is if the +12v feed from the power supply is within tolerances and/or if it's drastically dipping when the drives activate.

Edit: Also, quick sanity check: your 1000 has the original drive cable in it and the drives are properly jumpered for positions 1 or 2? (Or 0 and 1, that varied between drive manufacturers.) Tandy 1000s don't like PC-style twisted cable setups.
 
Yes, this was the exact problem I had - the +12V rail was dead. My poor attempt at fixing the power supply eventually led me to replacing it with a Meanwell power supply. I've got a thread here somewhere about it.
 
Update- i checked the 12v and its steady with no diving. I borrowed another drive and it spun up and read. I did some exploratory surgery and it sure seems that theres a problem with the control circuit boards. One will try to run but is weak and the other does everything short of spinning or trying to
 
Hello @Thatguyagain , I don't think I am following exactly what you mean when you refer to the control circuit boards. Are you talking about the circuit boards on the two drive that came with your 1000 when you got it?

If they are the original 360k drives they may need to be refurbished or replaced. I am not an expert in refurbishing those drives but I have read up on similar situations and watched some videos. If you are very handy you may be able to do that. I am not that good at soldering so I chose to replace the drive with a working 1.44 drive that is seen as a 720k drive by the BIOS. I did have to set the jumper to the correct number but after I did that the computer reads 720k boot disks from the 1.44 drive.

Here's my write up on my Tandy 100HD. Maybe it will be of interest and give you some ideas.


Seaken
 
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