I bent that piece on a drive whilst trying to clean the heads. After some really intensive googling, I found some instructions on how to fix it. it was a word doc that I think I found on the way back machine. It was actually really easy. Put a piece of soft cardboard on the head (to protect it) and put a screwdriver between the heads as a fulcrum. carefully push down and bend it back in place. I fixed mine about 2 years ago and it's still working. It's worth a try, you cant kill it any worse...
Aweosme! I have no idea why mine acted up unless it was a fluke like mine was on the line of being faulty. I might still track down another fualty drive just for the case to put the emulator in
First thing, the IIGS external 800k drives will work on a Mac. The external 800k drive that is Mac only is shorter, does not have the molded vent look and does not have a daisy chain port. The drive mechanisms are the same though, but it doesn’t have the daisy chain board which is what you need to make it work on an Apple II Secondly, the 1.44MB mechanism will work in the 800k enclosure without issue, though the Apple II will only recognize it as an 800k drive. If you want to have the full capacity available, you need the Apple II 3.5 Drive Controller Card. That card is equipped with the SWIM drive controller chip that supports 1.44MB drives. And the other cool thing is it will work on a Mac as an external 1.44MB drive if the Mac has a SWIM chip, which most do except the regular SE and earlier Macs that only had the IWM controller chip Thirdly you should use double density disks for 800k. The magnet medium on high density disks are different and trying to force it into a double density or vice versa will end up with unstable disks Fourthly, the constantly ejecting cycling may be caused by a broken gear in the ejected motor. This is pretty common in the auto eject drives. You can find replacement gears at MacEffects I’ve never thought of swapping a high density drive head to a double density mechanism, nice to know that works
Wow there's a lot here lol ill try and Answer as you commented lol 1. I had no idea the 3.5 would work with the mac...maybe I was going off the 5.25 wasn't able to...I've seen the smaller mac drive so I assumed they were different. 2. I figured the drive might but didn't know for sure I just assumed it could since the main mechanism was identical. I'm going to assume the swim chip was on the liron (and modern Yellowstone) cards 3. Yea I should have used DD to avoid issues, and j have some but they are older and little dirty ( a couple fouled a drive in my 486 trying to make a 720k floppy of simcity, so I tried hd thinking it would just work as do but then figured out like on a pc the notch needs covered. 4. Thats what I thought too but I took the mech apart and gears intact. I even took the eject part from a 3rd spare drive and same thing...ejection cycled. And yea I was surprised as well. That was a last ditch thing to get this working. It has a quirk now tho...I was reading a stack of unknown apple iigs floppies and 1 of them caused an io error for a while....went away after I had power off for about 2 or 3 minutes. And I can repeat it with that floppy so something odd but the ones I made work so I'm happy
@@definitelycasualpcs8789 The 5.25 will not directly work on a Mac, that is correct, and yes, the signalling on the wires are slightly different. The only way you can connect the 5.25 drive to a Mac is via the Apple IIe card for the LC or Colour Classic I believe. The Liron card and Yellowstone provides Smartport and the equivalent of the IWM, so even if you connected a 1.44MB drive to them, it will only operate as an 800K drive. Also the regular 800K drive for the GS won't work on the IIc but it will work on the IIc Plus. There is a variant of the external 800K drive that looks almost like the GS version but is the same colour as the IIc and has a thinner eject button, and is referred to as a Unidisk 3.5 If the gear on that eject motor was fine, then perhaps there is something wrong with PCB of that 1.44 drive. I've never seen that kind of problem that wasn't caused by a broken gear
@lemonherb1 oh the liron/Yellowstone is iwm not swim? Ah I must've read the site wrong lol And yea I think when I mentioned the c and c+ I was thinking of the unidisk. I know they are pretty pricey units. Yea it was weird. Constant failures and eject cycling. But what was weird is I have a drive with a bad gear and it just spins...this one I could see and hear the mechanicals moving and sliding so idk it was odd to fail that way...it was working just fine until it wasn't
@@definitelycasualpcs8789 Yes they are IWM. Only the Apple II 3.5 Drive Controller Card has the SWIM chip. Perhaps the large gear isn't aligned properly? The metal pin should be pointing away from the motor.
Just found this channel. Going to binge watch all of these this weekend👌🏽
I bent that piece on a drive whilst trying to clean the heads.
After some really intensive googling, I found some instructions on how to fix it. it was a word doc that I think I found on the way back machine.
It was actually really easy. Put a piece of soft cardboard on the head (to protect it) and put a screwdriver between the heads as a fulcrum. carefully push down and bend it back in place.
I fixed mine about 2 years ago and it's still working.
It's worth a try, you cant kill it any worse...
That's not a bad idea actually...
It not too much work to swap the heads over...I might try that and see.
I added two 1.44 sony floppies and put them into the 800k cases. They work great. Even though I have a floppy emu and a booti.
Aweosme! I have no idea why mine acted up unless it was a fluke like mine was on the line of being faulty. I might still track down another fualty drive just for the case to put the emulator in
First thing, the IIGS external 800k drives will work on a Mac. The external 800k drive that is Mac only is shorter, does not have the molded vent look and does not have a daisy chain port. The drive mechanisms are the same though, but it doesn’t have the daisy chain board which is what you need to make it work on an Apple II
Secondly, the 1.44MB mechanism will work in the 800k enclosure without issue, though the Apple II will only recognize it as an 800k drive. If you want to have the full capacity available, you need the Apple II 3.5 Drive Controller Card. That card is equipped with the SWIM drive controller chip that supports 1.44MB drives. And the other cool thing is it will work on a Mac as an external 1.44MB drive if the Mac has a SWIM chip, which most do except the regular SE and earlier Macs that only had the IWM controller chip
Thirdly you should use double density disks for 800k. The magnet medium on high density disks are different and trying to force it into a double density or vice versa will end up with unstable disks
Fourthly, the constantly ejecting cycling may be caused by a broken gear in the ejected motor. This is pretty common in the auto eject drives. You can find replacement gears at MacEffects
I’ve never thought of swapping a high density drive head to a double density mechanism, nice to know that works
Wow there's a lot here lol ill try and Answer as you commented lol
1. I had no idea the 3.5 would work with the mac...maybe I was going off the 5.25 wasn't able to...I've seen the smaller mac drive so I assumed they were different.
2. I figured the drive might but didn't know for sure I just assumed it could since the main mechanism was identical. I'm going to assume the swim chip was on the liron (and modern Yellowstone) cards
3. Yea I should have used DD to avoid issues, and j have some but they are older and little dirty ( a couple fouled a drive in my 486 trying to make a 720k floppy of simcity, so I tried hd thinking it would just work as do but then figured out like on a pc the notch needs covered.
4. Thats what I thought too but I took the mech apart and gears intact. I even took the eject part from a 3rd spare drive and same thing...ejection cycled.
And yea I was surprised as well. That was a last ditch thing to get this working. It has a quirk now tho...I was reading a stack of unknown apple iigs floppies and 1 of them caused an io error for a while....went away after I had power off for about 2 or 3 minutes. And I can repeat it with that floppy so something odd but the ones I made work so I'm happy
@@definitelycasualpcs8789
The 5.25 will not directly work on a Mac, that is correct, and yes, the signalling on the wires are slightly different. The only way you can connect the 5.25 drive to a Mac is via the Apple IIe card for the LC or Colour Classic I believe.
The Liron card and Yellowstone provides Smartport and the equivalent of the IWM, so even if you connected a 1.44MB drive to them, it will only operate as an 800K drive.
Also the regular 800K drive for the GS won't work on the IIc but it will work on the IIc Plus. There is a variant of the external 800K drive that looks almost like the GS version but is the same colour as the IIc and has a thinner eject button, and is referred to as a Unidisk 3.5
If the gear on that eject motor was fine, then perhaps there is something wrong with PCB of that 1.44 drive. I've never seen that kind of problem that wasn't caused by a broken gear
@lemonherb1 oh the liron/Yellowstone is iwm not swim? Ah I must've read the site wrong lol
And yea I think when I mentioned the c and c+ I was thinking of the unidisk. I know they are pretty pricey units.
Yea it was weird. Constant failures and eject cycling. But what was weird is I have a drive with a bad gear and it just spins...this one I could see and hear the mechanicals moving and sliding so idk it was odd to fail that way...it was working just fine until it wasn't
@@definitelycasualpcs8789 Yes they are IWM. Only the Apple II 3.5 Drive Controller Card has the SWIM chip.
Perhaps the large gear isn't aligned properly? The metal pin should be pointing away from the motor.