> From:    Keith Morse <[log in to unmask]>
> On Mon, 2 Aug 1999, Timchenko Maxim wrote:
>
> > First thing to do is get a cleaning diskette and clean the drive.

Yes.  I recommend one of the ones that uses a liquid cleaner (probably
99+% isopropyl alcohol), as opposed to a dry (mildly abrasive) disk.

> > <> Max Timchenko [MaxVT]
> > <>
> > <> [log in to unmask]
> >
> > On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Susanne J. Walsh wrote:
> >
> > > My husband has a DPS Electronics Tracer 600 laptop.  The 1.44 floppy drive
> > > is not working.  Most of the time it wants to format the disk in drive A
> > > because it says it is not formatted.  Even if you can get the laptop to
> > > recognize there are files on the floppy disk, you cannot access the files.
> >
>
> Please note, I am not casting an dispersions or denegrating the responder
> in this email.
>
>
> Just curious,  cleaning the floppy drive in my experience has never
> worked.  We do   work for a couple of warranty businesses and this is a
> standard part of their proceedures for doing on site work.  Like wise, I
> done work in conjuction with a vertical application vender that uses SCO
> Unix on generic clone pc's.  Their proceedure for a software update is to
> clean 20 times before applying the update which comes on floppies.  Again
> this has never worked.  Any stories of success for cleaning floppy drives?

The other possible problem is that the drive has become mis-aligned (either
by parts wearing to the point where they are too sloppy to find the tracks
laid down by a properly aligned drive, or it somehow was bent or pushed out
out of alignment).

If it can consistently read disks that it formatted, but no others, it is
probably the latter - and there is a chance that you could re-adjust it.
(Worn-out drives aren't worth trying to repair - at best, you get a beat-up
old drive for all your trouble.)

You could try to fudge it by aligning it on known good disk (such as a
read-only floppy of software), but setting up to do it properly (with
analog alignment disk and oscilloscope) would cost many times what a new
drive would.  There are also original digital disks (copies will NOT
work), with some tracks purposely mis-aligned in various different ways that
are much cheaper, do an adequate job, but probably cost more than a new
drive.  This is only useful if you can afford the time to re-align a bunch
drives - but don't accidentally overwrite it!

Boyd Ramsay

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