jweeks@umnd-cs-luke.d.umn.edu (John A. Weeks III) (08/07/88)
Sony and Apple manufacture and distribute a magnificent piece of
engineering called a 3.5" Disk Drive. I own three of these
things, one in a Mac+, the other two are external drives.
All three of these drives have experienced the same mechanical
failure: the upper read/write head mounting bracket (piece of
copper foil) has broken. This results in the upper head coming
loose and an error message saying "This disk is unreadable..."
(even though the disk works OK in other machines).
My dealer wants $125 + 2 hours labor at $28.50/hour to repair
each drive. This is the same price as some third party drives,
and much more than the IBM-PC add-on 3.5 drives.
I, being somewhat experienced in micro-electronics, have fixed
each drive by machining a new bracket, then attaching it with
Super Gel Glue. Painful & lots of work, tricky to align, but
it sure seems to work.
My questions:
(1) What could I be doing to cause this? I do use the Mac+
12 hours a day, but the problem looks more like a design
weakness/flaw to me. The drives are 9-12 months old.
(2) I align the head stop sensor by trial & error. Is there
a proper way to do this, or any software to check the
alignment?
(3) Does Apple sell service parts for the Macintosh, such as
new head assemblies? My dealer says no, but I think
he is just trying to gouge me for a replacement drive.
(This is not a flame on Apple. The Apple 3.5 drives are a
real neat piece of hardware. It's just a bit strange that
I have had the same problems with three different units.)
OS/2: Just Say No! An Apple-A-Day Takes My Credit Card Away.
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John Weeks jweeks@luke.d.umn.edu
-------------------------------------------------------------------thecloud@pnet06.cts.com (Ken Mcleod) (08/09/88)
jweeks@umnd-cs-luke.d.umn.edu (John A. Weeks III) writes: >All three of these (800K floppy) drives have experienced the same mechanical >failure: the upper read/write head mounting bracket (piece of >copper foil) has broken. This results in the upper head coming >loose and an error message... I'm sitting here with a piece of tape over the slot in my Mac, with the exact same problem! The upper head is dangling at a zany angle from a broken piece of copper foil. Fortunately, I have an external floppy as well as a hard drive to get me through. Unfortunately, I have a new 800K floppy on order from Apple (3+ weeks and counting... glad it wasn't something *really* in short supply!). There was no warning when the drive failed; in fact, I was in the middle of a backup session, and the unlucky disk in the drive at the time got eaten (grind, grind...). The life expectancy of an 800K floppy drive, in regular use 8 hours a day, appears to be 9-12 months... based on my experience, John's, and several other people I know personally. This would seem to be the one Mac component that takes the most punishment, from a mechanical point of view, so I don't know what a "reasonable" lifespan should be. However, the fact that in all cases the upper head bracket failed seems to indicate a design flaw. Is this a "known problem," perhaps? ========== ==================================== ....... =========== Ken McLeod UUCP: {crash uunet}!pnet06!thecloud :. .: "Kenneth, ---------- ARPA: crash!pnet06!thecloud@nosc.mil :::.. ..::: what is the thecloud@pnet06.cts.com | thecloud@dhw68k.cts.com //// frequency?"