I just finished restoring my Macintosh Classic (new caps, retrobrite case). It's working perfectly minus one thing... the floppy drive.
While cleaning it, I didn't realize how little upward force it took on the heads to "bend" the spring steel to permanently deform it. I tried the "inserting a rod at the spring steel and bending it back downward" trick, but my lovely MP-F75W-01G is still non-functional.
Next comes Ebay. Whoo whee, the auto-inject drives are expensive.
A replacement?
As I look over at my Performa 6400 with extremely brittle plastic that creaks when I look at it... I see it's floppy disk drive (MF355F-2592MA). Pull it and it looks like it will work! Exact same interface... except the drive is not auto-inject. You can't push the floppy disk into the drive through the front case slot (and there's no way in hell i'm modifying the case of my Classic)
A repair.
Running towards the end of ideas, I found a bunch of Sony MP-F73W-01D drives on Ebay. They're a similar generation and support a similar range of floppy disk sizes. They're also substantially cheaper.
I'm going to try transplanting a head assembly from the MP-F73W-01D into my otherwise perfect MP-F75W-01G. If it works, I may have two other head assemblies i'll post for sale here for a minimal cost if anyone is interested.
While cleaning it, I didn't realize how little upward force it took on the heads to "bend" the spring steel to permanently deform it. I tried the "inserting a rod at the spring steel and bending it back downward" trick, but my lovely MP-F75W-01G is still non-functional.
Next comes Ebay. Whoo whee, the auto-inject drives are expensive.
A replacement?
As I look over at my Performa 6400 with extremely brittle plastic that creaks when I look at it... I see it's floppy disk drive (MF355F-2592MA). Pull it and it looks like it will work! Exact same interface... except the drive is not auto-inject. You can't push the floppy disk into the drive through the front case slot (and there's no way in hell i'm modifying the case of my Classic)
A repair.
Running towards the end of ideas, I found a bunch of Sony MP-F73W-01D drives on Ebay. They're a similar generation and support a similar range of floppy disk sizes. They're also substantially cheaper.
I'm going to try transplanting a head assembly from the MP-F73W-01D into my otherwise perfect MP-F75W-01G. If it works, I may have two other head assemblies i'll post for sale here for a minimal cost if anyone is interested.
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