At 10:11 PM 09/11/2000, Steven Gaber wrote:
>I'm in big trouble now.
>
>Today at work, I put one of those cheap floppies the County
>buys for us into the office PC and the plastic slider that
>goes over the end of the disk came off.  It is stuck inside
>the drive and the drive ain't workin.
>
>Since when did they start using such cheap flimsy crap on
>floppies?  All the ones I've seen have stainless steel or
>aluminum sliders.
>
>Anyway, I guess I have to remove the cover, take out the
>drive and try to extract it with a hemostat or tweezers.  Is
>that possible? I looked into the drive but didn't see the
>plastic piece.
>
>This is a generic low-bid PC built by some subcontractor,
>probably in his garage.  It is a 233 Pentium and appears to
>have standard accessories.
>
>You think the drive is damaged?  It made a funny noise and
>then an error message appeared on the screen.

My youngest son has on at least five occasions had this
same thing occur and I have become rather good at
removing floppy covers from his floppy drive.   I shaved
a pencil so that it is the exact size of the opening.
The pencil is inserted into one side of the drive to hold
open the door.   Then I use a pair of 8" tweezers and
a small flashlight to locate the cover, carefully pulling it
from his floppy drive.

As I say, he has done this quite often, it has happened
to the three different PCs he has owned over the last
four and half years, each continued to have no problems
with the floppy drive.  I never removed the floppy drives,
just reached in and pulled out the floppy covers, (both
metal and plastic).  The secret is to get hold of both
sides and squeeze it together so that it does not catch
while removing it.

     Bob Wright
The NOSPIN Group

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