More Magneto Optical fun! This time, a Panasonic LF-3000E...

[Kai Robinson]

This is part of a haul that included a Macintosh 8100/100AV and a 15" Sony Trinitron Monitor.

It came with 5 x 128MB Cartridges, a cleaning cartridge and the manual and original SCSI cable. It's sooooo quiet compared to a ZIP drive, but about the same or slightly slower speed - 33MB took around 4 minutes to write to the disk. All 5 disks in the haul formatted just fine, and work without any issue. FWB Toolkit had no problems with formatting it, either.

Seems like media is still available for these drives, too.

It's my new favourite piece of oddware!

 

[Paolo B]

Hi All,
I recently managed to score a couple of MO drives for relatively cheap money.
In Japan (where I’m currently based), the format was very popular, so it’s indeed easy to find drives and blank media.
One drive has already arrived, the second one is on the way, both SCSI units from Fujitsu. I had no experience with MO drives (except with the father of them all, the one in the NeXT Computer…), so I trusted the vendor that was showing the disk mounted on a Mac desktop.
The first drive arrived in really excellent conditions, I would say “as new”.
And in fact, when I connect it to my SE / 30, everything works fine. I can even boot from the external disk.
So, everything cool, except for the eject function.
Both hardware and software eject work, but if I take out the disk, the eject mechanism is not remaining opened, but it folds over and inserting another disk becomes impossible. So, the only way is to mechanically operate the emergency eject and lift the frame until it’s possible to slide in a disk. There must be something wrong.
As I have seen already a mention to this issue in some other thread and forums, I would like to know if there’s any workaround (specific configuration for the dip switches?) I should be aware of, before I even consider checking if it’s a mechanical failure of some kind due to the age of the drive (Rubber parts? Worn out gears?).
Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[Kai Robinson]

I just realized you got a cleaning cartridge with your drive. Does it have any instructions with it? The cleaning cartridges are rare AF.

I have the whole manual that goes with it - i can dig it out when i get home

 

[splorp]

It's my new favourite piece of oddware!

This is the cutest MO drive I have ever seen.

 

[Paolo B]

I purchased a large lot of drives last year and the seller removed them from their proper shipping protection and shipped them taped together without any shock protection. Most survived fine but a lot of the drives on the bottom of the box were broken. A few had the condition you describe, where eject wasn’t working. I assume, based on some of the drives having shattered their plastic bezel, some other drives had broken gears.

I also purchased a 2.3GB USB model Fujitsu that would not allow disks to be inserted or removed. That seller literally dropped the drive into a paper USPS flat rate envelope and mailed it. I opened it up and the gears were busted.

So it seems that if the drives aren’t protected well during shipping, the gears can fracture or break, resulting in disk inject/eject issues.

Thanks for the feedback, even though it’s not very encouraging.
I’m also convinced it must be something mechanical, as it happens as you power the unit up.
Will see what I can do, probably not much.

 

[Paolo B]

I just gave it a quick look, the issue lays in the mechanics of the eject mechanism.
As you can see from the picture, there’s a rotating cam, which acts on a pin, translating rotational movement into linear one.
Apparently, nothing looks damaged, just kind of snapped out of position (even though there seems to be a tiny gear train that I still have to inspect, but the cam always rotates back to initial position, so it should be OK).
As is now, as the cam reaches rearmost position (270 deg), the pin just slips under the cam and the sledge is abruptly pulled back to closed position by the action of the springs.
Seems to me that by fiddling with the mechanical eject and pushing the eject button at the same time, the whole mechanism went out of synchronization.
I’d need to see a working drive for figuring out a fix…

 

[Paolo B]

The loading mechanism is not remaining in open position because there’s a broken piece.
Fatigue. Such a lousy design I could hardly believe.
Will see if it can be reliably fixed.

 

[Kai Robinson]

Could 3d-print a replacement part

 

[Paolo B]

Could 3d-print a replacement part

It’s of course a possibility, even though the cheapest way wold be to just get another drive. But I like fixing things, so I‘m considering options…
Baseline is made of POM, very sturdy plastic, so I doubt a 3D printed repalcement would stand a chance to survive.
The failed component is just a hook which keeps the loading mechanism open and gets released when a disk is pushed into the slot.
The “natural“ position of the mechanism is in seated position. When the disk is ejected, the eject mechanism lifts the sledge and the disk is free to get ejected by the action of a pre-loaded spring.
At that point, the mechanism would just get back to seated position, but the hook is supposed to engage and prevent it from closing.
The action of mechanically catching and stopping moving parts is like hammering and the design is so poor that fatigue failure is just a matter of time.
I’d bet majority of the surviving units have the same defect.

So, I think I will try to prototype a replacement out of some brass or aluminum sheets, as the failed part is basically 2D and just 1 mm thick. Ideally I should aim at laser cutting, but I’m not sure where to look at.

 

[Paolo B]

So, here’s the fix. The two pieces bonded back together with epoxy and laminated on top of a 0.2 mm Al sheet. The metal layer now bears the mechanical stress, the plastic pieces ensure the fit.
After a good clean and lubrication, the MO unit is now again fully functional and back in the fanless external case. The drive is super quite and very responsive. It’s indeed a shame the format didn’t get much recognition outside Japan.
Will post some pictures of the units at work over the next days.

 

[Paolo B]

Two 640 Mb Fujitsu drives, MCF3064SS (Aug 1999, the one that arrived with broken gears), and a M2513A6R (May 1998).
They are now housed into Fujitsu 243 (fan less!) and 241 (very noisy fan) SCSI case respectively, both of which nicely match the “snow white” of the Macs.
Configuring the dip switches on the drive and on the external cases seems to be black magic, couldn’t find much documentation.
In the current status, one is being recognized as “Drive”, the other as “Optical”.
They both work, though.
However, the one recognized as “Drive” is much faster, don’t know if it’s just because it’s “better” or because of the configuration and / or the driver. I need to investigate further.
Anyhow, I like more the slowest one, as it’s better engineered, the other one is indeed built to cost.

 

[Paolo B]

Here’s the set up (in the background, the venerable Canon MO Drive keeps a fatherly eye on the two youngsters…)