Hi,
I just bought a Mac 128K locally and restored it to operating condition.
The RAM fix on the new machine, was straight forward, but the floppy drive clean and lube job became an adventure. Some notes/opinions posted on my blog in case someone else runs into the same issue(s) with their 400k drive.
http://www.willegal.net/blog/?p=2382
I had a 128K back in '84, that is now a macquarium. It was beyond restoration, due to the number of modifications it experienced over a number of years of hard use. In fact, it ended it's working life as a mac plus. The original motherboard was upgraded to 512K, then swapped for a plus motherboard. The power suppy upgraded and a fan installed. The case was cut open to fit the scsi connector of the plus motherboard. The mouse's feet wore out and were replaced by plastic pads glued onto it.
Anyway, using one of these original machines again has been a real nostalgia trip. I had completely forgotten about how many floppy swaps it takes to duplicate a disk. Let's see: 80 tracks at about 4 tracks at a time times two disks. That is about 40 swaps! It's actually a little less because the copy program can do more inner tracks at a time, since they hold less data. Anyway I still have some disks with original mac paint artwork that I did back in the day. Maybe I'll post some of it on my website, once I get my imagewriter working.
Regards,
Mike Willegal
Mike,
A great read about your adventure with your new Toy!!!
Who would have thought you would experience the "Ghost in the Machine" while working on a floppy drive.
Cheers,
Corey
That reminds me to an incident that occured to me in the early 80´s when a friend of mine changed the layout of one of my PCB´s with the idea in mind to "optimize" my layout... - it turned the PCB into a kind of radio with "aligned station search" to a rather far radiostation ( in original the PCB was designed to measure very small and fast acting voltages and therefor i had added several windings to add some capacity and length to the path ) - in fact the changes by removing the windings and straighten the path to a long straight pattern changed the input trace to a well tuned antenna leading straight to the input of a very high FET-resistance of a OP-Amp with very fast slewrate....
both experiences made by mike and me remind us to basic electronic laws: high voltage and straight none shielded wires act with effects to electromagnetic and electrostatic fields....