🚀 go-pugleaf

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,
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