TEAC FD55-GFR repair
I have three TEAC 5.25" drives and a number of software titles on 5.25 inch disks but I am experiencing difficulty reading them.
Having tried cleaning the heads and substituting cables, controllers and even motherboards, with no result, I am concluding my drives need repair or realignment.
Can anyone suggest a source for such repair?
Thanks,
clh333
Having tried cleaning the heads and substituting cables, controllers and even motherboards, with no result, I am concluding my drives need repair or realignment.
Can anyone suggest a source for such repair?
Thanks,
clh333
Comments
Although i guess these can be repaired, I find it easier to just purchase them periodically and maintain a stock of FDDs.
Just recently, there were New Old Stock (NOS) Teac FD55-GFRs on Ebay for $40.
NOS FDDs can typically run from $40 - $75, if you can find them.
The up side is that these usually give excellent performance for many years of use.
The down side is that they are expensive and hard to find, but for me, well worth the price.
You will also find many used FDDs on Ebay and other sites, but these can be a dice roll.
You should only purchase used FDDs if they can be returned if not functional.
These can be found in a varying price range, but I only buy used FDD's if under $25.
The Panasonic JU-475-x series FDD is also quite common and a good drive and can replace the Teac FD55-GFR.
Did you just use a head cleaner disk? You may need to get in there and use a q-tip and alcohol.
When dealing with lots of old, especially poorly stored, floppies it is important to keep the heads clean. Fortunately, most Teac 5.25" drives have easily accessible heads when it is not installed in a drive bay.
Oh, and watch out for any "Wabash" brand disk media. Those WILL fall to shreds. There are some tricks for getting data off of them, but they aren't simple.
Does the drive spin up and the light come on when you try to access it? Will it format a blank disk? What specific hardware setup are you using it with?
You can ask for additional hardware advice over at the Vintage Computing Forum: http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/
Just be warned, the mods there typically frown on discussion of sharing software.
Also, if you are patient, you can ocasionally find used 1.2mb or 360K drives on eBay for $20-$30. Yes, there are a lot of sellers that want an arm and a leg.
Thanks for your suggestions. I have three TEAC FGRs, all 5.25 1.2 Mb, pulled from old systems I once owned. One of them is now installed and working in an AMD Athlon system driven by on-board (SOYO) controller; the other two are balky. I also purchased two Panasonics at eBay auction, both 5.25, one 1.2 and one 360. So far both are performing acceptably; the 1.2 is in a 486 system driven by a Promise EIDE2300Plus VLB controller. The 360 will go in a P II system (ASUS) using either the on-board controller or a DTC ISA board.
I also have the Copy II PC Deluxe Option Board (ISA), the Kryoflux USB interface, the ZoomFloppy USB interface and the SuperCard Pro USB interface, each of which seems to be able to communicate with these drives, although the results have been spotty.
With the SuperCard utility I can check the maximum track read and drive spin rate. I do not have any idea whether the head alignment is correct or within tolerance on any of these drives. Obviously if they vary greatly one from another then I cannot move information from machine to machine via disks even if I can write them successfully.
I have been using Q-tips and 70% isopropyl alcohol to clean the heads. I also found that one of the internal data cables had shifted and was restricting movement of the head carriage - couldn't reach the inner tracks.
I still would like to find somebody who refurbishes these things: TEAC California says they haven't handled that kind of work for years. Some other companies that advertise they do these repairs haven't bothered to respond to my inquiry. Buying used drives on eBay is a crap-shoot.
My overall objective is not to resurrect these systems but to rescue the data on a store of 5.25 disks (CP/M 2.2, MS-DOS, C-64) dating back to the early 1980s. With the help of my working drives I have been able to read and transfer most of the existing DOS. I haven't attempted any of the other formats yet but so far I have almost 300 Mb of old files on hard disk.
I haven't found a successful method for removing surface imperfections (alcohol and a Q-tip don't seem to work as advertised) so I have thrown away a lot of suspect disks. Looking for replacements of these titles led me to this site, for which I am grateful to have access.
Needless to say, my wife thinks I'm nuts.
-CH-
The easiest way to check for alignment is to have several drives, format the disk with one drive and then test it in another (again, use Norton disk test or similar). If it formats in the first drive, and is unreadable in the second, while also formatting OK in the second and then being unreadable in the first, then that indicates an alignment problem.
You say you have a 1.2mb and 360K drive, so be aware that it is impossible to reliably write 360K (48tpi) disks in a 1.2mb (96tpi) drive. They will read fine in the 1.2mb drive, but may be unreadable in a real 360K drive. There are some tricks such as degaussing the disk first, or formatting it on the 360K drive first, that can sort of work, but expect problems.
If you are simply reading in disks, then it won't be much of an issue. Just make sure to keep everything write protected.
However if you are writing disks for use in systems with 180k/360K drives then you should ALWAYS format and write the disk with a 360K drive, and never write to it with the 1.2mb drive. (Thanks to the Windows 9x volume tracker and last access dates, just plopping a non-write protected 360K disk in a 1.2mb drive and copying files can render the disk unreadable in a genuine 360K drive.)
Ask over at the vintage computing forums, I know there are a number of people over there that are set up for that sort of thing and would be happy to help.
To do it right, one would use an alignment disk and an oscilloscope. I don't happen to have an oscilloscope.
Although on PC half-height drives, other malfunctions are a little more likely than alignment.
From my own experience reading random poorly stored disks from eBay, a big problem is junk that has gotten inside the disk jacket. You won't always notice that until you run the disks and it starts tearing things up.
So far I've had good luck simply rinsing the disk with water. Just run warm tap water on to the disk "cookie" through the central hub and read opening from several directions front and back. Using some care it is possible to do this without getting the label wet. Then gently prop the jacket up around the hub using some q-tips and let it dry in front of a fan. Before spinning it up, make sure it is completely dry and clean any remaining dirt or residue with alcohol and a q-tip.
There are more professional ways for doing data recovery, but that usually involves cutting open the disk jacket.
It is always a gamble.
Once a disk is scratched or dented, then there is not much that can be done. For disks that you want to write to, most imaging tools require the disk to be 100% error free. If they are not original commercial software disks, then you might as well toss them.
The universe is nuts.
Never used the Norton Utilities - always used PC Tools. I'll look this up, thanks. I'll also post on the vintage forum asking for help with drives. I have an old Leader Oscilloscope but would also need a reference disk formatted with the signal pattern.
I was aware of the incompatibility between 360 and 1.2 Mb drive formats; I know that the lower density drive heads are "fatter" and the disks have higher coercivity factors. I can format for 360 (or 320, though it takes forever) with a 1.2 Mb drive but the disk is not readable thereafter. That's why I bought a 360 drive on eBay.
Didn't know about that Win98 "undocumented feature". I'll stay away from that. I used DOS or WinXP to copy what has been copied so far. Once read successfully my objective has been met; I only want to reconstitute the files, not "image" the disk unless absolutely necessary. Only a few of the DOS disks were copy-protected; I tended to avoid those.
I was surprised how many disks were still readable after 30 years or so. For the last 20 they were stored in a damp basement. When (last year) I discovered mildew was forming I decided I had to do something and that's how this project started.
Problem disks fell into three categories: Tight (compressed from storage) jacket, jacket liner transfer to disk and mildew formation. Liner transfer was easiest to solve with alcohol and a Q-tip. I tried slitting tight jackets but that didn't work very well. I should have transferred the disk to a looser jacket, I guess. I tried rinsing a mildewed disk in a mild solution of calcium hypochlorite ("bleach") and other solvents but never was able to read the disk after that.
Certain brands of disks seemed immune to problems; others were virtual petri dishes.
I'm through the DOS store now, fortunately, but I still have CP/M and C-64 to process, so any hints or tips are welcome. Yes, there are some of the dreaded Wabash among the CP/M.
Thanks again for your reply.
-CH-
-CH-
I'd imagine that would eat it up. The object here isn't just to kill junk, it is to remove the junk altogether. I've seen disks with splotchy spots that were stored inside in dry conditions, so what you are seeing may not be "mildew". It might be degrading binder, chemical reaction with the air, or degrading adhesive that holds the cloth inside the jacket.
Chuck over at the VCF has a method for dealing with bad binder that involves removing the cookies and baking them (yummy!) http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum ... 42663.html
I had the pleasure of reading in some 8" Wabash disks recently. If I put a disk in the drive without first doing anything to the disk, there would be a large screeching from the drive head and it would tear off magnetic material. Since most of these disks weren't important, I did a bit of experimenting with different ways to clean them.
Just alcohol didn't do much. But rinsing them off with warm (hot enough to still comfortably touch) water got rid of the screeching and mostly prevented additional media shedding, permitting the disk to be read. Don't use soap BTW, that leave a spotty waxy residue.
Since I didn't remove these from the jackets, I had to prop up the jackets with q-tips and leave them in front of a fan to dry - but in some cases (only on the Wabash disks) the disk surface would stick to the cloth inside the jacket on the opposite side of the q-tip. That would tear off a little bit of magnetic media in a pattern that looked like the inside of the jacket. I found it helped to move the q-tips around periodically while drying.
And if the wabash disks get even a LITTLE scratch after that, the tiny scratch will hemorage magnetic material making each following read worse.
Of course, don't use a hair dryer to dry jackets. That's a well known no-no from back in the day that will warp the jackets.
Hope this helps, although your mileage will probably vary.
The nice thing about using a Kryoflux or SCP, you can read the disk in one pass and then analyze it later. But I have encountered a few times when they will stick their noses in the air and refuse to read or decode something, yet putting it in a real floppy drive on a real FDC will get a successful read.
Point well taken. :roll: But eventually there isn't going to be any more hardware or any more media to write back to. Where I can I want to identify software that can be simply copied to another disk in order to install it. Most of what I have copied so far meets that criterion. Where I have to I will image it, but imaging leaves you with the problem of writing the image back to some physical substrate. And the USB controllers are something of a black art to use successfully.
Thanks for the tips on dealing with iffy disks. When I hear the screeching I open the drive and toss the disk.