Hobbyist or repairer
Fixing a Commodore 1541 Disk Drive
Out comes the oscilloscope for a dead Commodore 1541 disk drive, a short board model with an Alps mechanism, which the maker sets out to fix.
Topic
floppy drive
12 videos.
Grime on the heads and rails, lubricant that has turned to gum and a sticking ejector are the usual troubles in a floppy drive, and one may read some disks and refuse others. Dirty heads are a common cause, so a clean is often tried before any board work.
To test a drive before opening it, Adrian's Greaseweazle video tests a Panasonic and a Shugart drive, and it needs a Greaseweazle. An Apple 3.5 inch drive with a faulty eject is stripped down and cleaned in a long tutorial. A dead Commodore 1541 is a bigger job, and this repair brings out an oscilloscope. Related jobs sit under cleaning.
A 1541 has a mains power supply inside, and its capacitors can hold a charge after unplugging. Solvents on the heads are flammable, so keep the window open. Any soldering brings burns and fumes, and old solder contains lead.
Hobbyist or repairer
Amiga 1200 from where Forrest Gump lives.
Amiga 1200 recap, floppy repair, ROM swap and hard drive build all happen on one untouched machine. The maker also builds a disk image in WinUAE and cleans a floppy drive.
Hobbyist or repairer
Using the Greaseweazle as a powerful disk drive diagnostic tool
Failing floppy drives are routine on retro computers, and the Greaseweazle running GW-DIAG is used to test them, including a Panasonic JU-475 and a Shugart SA-400.
Hobbyist or repairer
Apple 400k Single Sided Floppy Drive Refresh
An Apple 400K single sided floppy drive, taken from the Lisa 2/5 under restoration on Adrian's main channel, gets a refresh of its own, with a Sony drive service manual linked.
Hobbyist or repairer
A1200 Repairs / Upgrade / Timing Fix & More - Part 1
Why does an Amiga 1200 board misbehave on its floppy interface? Part 1 of a series looks at one strange fault, with capacitors, an FPU socket and a timing fix left for the next part.
Hobbyist or repairer
Can the Sun Help This Amiga 500?
Can sunlight or liquid hydrogen peroxide bring back a yellowed Amiga 500 case? The video tries both, then swaps the internal floppy drive for a Gotek with an external OLED screen.
Hobbyist or repairer
Commodore Amiga A1200 Controller Port Repair / FDD Service / ExpMem Error
An Amiga 1200 owned by William has one joystick direction not working, so GadgetUK164 repairs the controller port, services the floppy drive and cleans an expansion card.
Hobbyist or repairer
Commodore 1541 Disk Drive Repair - Bringing it Back to Life
Several faults turn up in a Commodore 1541 disk drive, and the repair includes mistakes along the way, with DeoxIT D5 and Tri-Flow lubricant among the products the maker mentions.
Hobbyist or repairer
Tutorial: Cleaning, lubricating and fixing an Apple 800k 3.5" floppy drive
An Apple 800k 3.5 inch floppy drive, a Sony MFD-51W-03, is stripped down and cleaned after years of gumming up, then its eject mechanism is put right, in a long tutorial.
Hobbyist or repairer
Can we fix Sinclair Spectrum +3 design flaws? Drive fix plus Better Sound & Video!
Three faults on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3 get attention, namely a dead disk drive, a poor RGB SCART picture and clipped audio, with resistors R42 and R43 swapped for the sound.
Hobbyist or repairer
Amiga HD floppy drive repair - Chinon FB-357A
Intermittent disk-in-drive detection on a Chinon FB-357A floppy drive from an Amiga 4000 is repaired in this video, while head cleaning with alcohol was done off camera.
Hobbyist or repairer
How to clean a 5 1/4" diskette
A diskette that has sat in an attic or basement tends to grow something, the maker says, and the video sets out a way of cleaning a 5.25 inch one.
