ostroff@penelope.Oswego.EDU (Boyd Ostroff) (09/04/90)
I posted a plea for help with a floppy drive problem the other day,
but still haven't got any answers. Anyway, I seem to have fixed it
myself and thought the solution might be of interest to others.
Upon closer inspection, I found that I could read floppy disks (such as
cat < /dev/rfp021 or mount /dev/fp021 /mnt), yet any attempt to write
to the floppy yielded an error.
I opened up the case and cleaned/wiggled the drive connector which
may have helped. I think this was the problem, though: I noticed a
ball of lint ("dust-bunny") lodged between the case and what appears to
be the write-protect notch sensor on the drive. I suspect that it was
blocking the photocell and convincing the drive that every disk had
a write-protect tab on it!
Anyway, it's working again. I would still be interested in seeing
a step-by-step description of how to replace the floppy drive with
a 720K 3.5" mechanism, however....
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