🚀 go-pugleaf

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. 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
John Weeks                                    jweeks@luke.d.umn.edu
-------------------------------------------------------------------